DESCR

Core command DESC DESCRIBE

Describes the structure of the table

Arguments

<tableName> (mandatory) the name of a table; ALPHA (optional) lists the columns sorted by name, ignoring case, instead of in table order

Examples

DESCR CUSTOMER;
DESC CUSTOMER ALPHA;

Notes

Describes the structure of a table: DESCR <tableName> [ALPHA], listing each column's name, type, size, nullability and default value. By default the columns are listed in the order of the columns in the table (their position in the table as the database reports it). With ALPHA, the same columns, with the same information, are listed sorted by column name, ignoring case, for quicker lookup in a wide table; only the order of the rows changes.

Size is the declared length for character and binary columns, and precision,scale for DECIMAL and NUMERIC columns (for example 10,2); for other types it is the size the JDBC driver reports.

tableName is mandatory and may be schema-qualified (e.g. DESCR PUBLIC.CUSTOMER). When no schema is given, only the connection's current schema is searched, and only that schema's columns are listed; a table with the same name in another schema is not shown. Qualify the name (e.g. DESCR OTHERSCHEMA.TOTO) to describe a table in a different schema. It is looked up case-insensitively: the name is tried as typed, then upper-cased, then lower-cased, and the first variant that resolves to an existing table is used; if that variant isn't the one you typed, the console reports which name was actually matched. There is no wildcard or partial-name support: the (case-insensitive) table name must otherwise match exactly, and _ and % are ordinary characters of the name (DESCR FOO_BAR never describes FOOXBAR, and DESCR TRY never describes COUNTRY). SHOW PK, SHOW FK, SHOW REFERENCES and SHOW INDEXES resolve table names exactly the same way.

Fails with an error if no table name is given, if anything other than ALPHA follows the table name, if none of the three case variants resolves to an existing table, or if the name matches tables in several schemas.

Last modified in release 5.4.5.