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Overview

The DESCRIBE statement is used to show columns within a table as well as tables within a database.

It is recommended to be used before creating a new table to avoid tables duplication

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Syntax

Below you can find the basic syntax for describing tables within a database as well as columns within tables:

DESCRIBE DATABASE;

DESCRIBE TABLE table_name;

where:

table_name: name of the table that you want to show

This statement is available to all users with the USAGE privilege on the schema, where the table is located

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Examples

To get a better understanding of the DESCRIBE statement, take a look at some examples below:

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DESCRIBE Table

In this example, we will figure out the columns of the part table. In order to do so, you need to run the query below:

DESCRIBE TABLE part;

As a result, you will get a list of column names, column types, and nullable options from the part table:

+----------------+------------+-------------+-------+----------+ 
| database_name  | table_name |    name     | type  | nullable |
+----------------+------------+-------------+-------+----------+
| public         | part       | p_partkey   | INT   | f        |
| public         | part       | p_name      | TEXT  | f        |
| public         | part       | p_mfgr      | TEXT  | f        |
| public         | part       | p_category  | TEXT  | f        |
| public         | part       | p_brand     | TEXT  | f        |
| public         | part       | p_color     | TEXT  | f        |
| public         | part       | p_type      | TEXT  | f        |
| public         | part       | p_size      | INT   | f        |
| public         | part       | p_container | TEXT  | f        |
+----------------+------------+-------------+-------+----------+
The example above shows that the tables reside in the public schema (the default schema in Oxla). You can also display tables from other schemas, by following the doc here

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DESCRIBE Database

In order to describe the database, you need to execute the following query:

DESCRIBE DATABASE;

The output for the above code consists of all existing tables from the specified database, as presented below:

+-----------------------------+
| name                        | 
+-----------------------------+
| supplier_scale_1_no_index   | 
| features                    | 
| orders                      | 
| features2                   | 
| featurestable               | 
| featurestable1              | 
| featurestable10             | 
+-----------------------------+
SHOW TABLESSHOW NODES