DESCRIBE Statement

The DESCRIBE statement shows the schema of a table or the execution plan of a query.

DESCRIBE TABLE

Shows the schema (column names and data types) of a table.

sql

DESCRIBE [TABLE] <table_name>

Parameter	Description
`<table_name>`	Name of the table to describe. Can include catalog and namespace.

Describe the schema of table T.

sql

DESCRIBE T;

Describe the schema with the optional TABLE keyword.

sql

DESCRIBE TABLE T;

Describe a table in a specific catalog and namespace.

sql

DESCRIBE my_catalog.my_namespace.my_table;

Returns a DataFrame with columns:

Column	Description
`column_name`	Name of the column
`type`	Data type of the column

Shows the query execution plan for a SELECT statement.

sql

DESCRIBE <select_statement>

Parameter	Description
`<select_statement>`	The SELECT statement to describe.

Describe the execution plan for a simple query.

sql

DESCRIBE SELECT * FROM T;

Describe the execution plan for a query with joins.

sql

DESCRIBE SELECT a.*, b.name FROM T a JOIN S b ON a.id = b.id;

!!! warning "Work in Progress"

The SQL Reference documents are a work in progress.