RE: Equivalent to Oracle's describe
Try the following:
dbschema -d 'database name' -t 'table name'
> ----------
> From: Leffler, Jonathan[SMTP:jleffler@visa.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 17, 1998 11:42 AM
> To: 'informix-list@iiug.org'; 'James Cooper'
> Subject: RE: Equivalent to Oracle's describe
>
> I'm not sure whether it's the answer you want, but DB-Access can be used
> in
> a non-interactive mode and understands the INFO command:
>
> dbaccess dbase - <<!
> INFO COLUMNS FOR sometable;
> !
>
> Note that INFO is not an ESQL/C command; it is understood only by
> DB-Access
> and ISQL and is handled by those programs internally. It is fairly
> straightforward to handle pre-IUS data types, but the IUS extended data
> types are much more difficult.
>
> Also, the SQLCMD program in the IIUG archives (http://www.iiug.org) can
> show the column names and (pre-IUS) types of query results - use 'sqlcmd
> -HT' or the 'headings on' and 'types on' built-in commands. You could
> filch the conversion code from there. DB-Access doesn't display the types
>
> of query results, of course.
>
> The most important information comes from the ColType and ColLength
> columns
> in the 'informix'.SysColumns table, but there is a lot of encoding of the
> information. The Informix Guide to SQL: Reference has a chapter on the
> system catalogue. What more do you want in the way of information?
> Having
> the ESQL/C headers will often make it a little easier to understand what's
>
> going on with the more complex data types (meaning DATETIME and INTERVAL).
>
> Does anybody have code to interpret the extended IUS data types? If so,
> can I see it?
>
> Yours,
> Jonathan Leffler (jleffler@visa.com) #include <bother.ms-exchange.h>
>
>
> ----------
> From: James Cooper[SMTP:pixel@organic.com]
> Sent: Monday, March 16, 1998 11:11 PM
>
> I'm new to the Informix world, and miss the "describe" command in Oracle
> that displays the column names and datatypes for a given table or view.
>
> I realize that if I run dbaccess in its menu driven mode that I can get
> this information, but for whatever reason I'm just not that into the fancy
> ASCII menus.
>
> Also, can anyone recommend a good reference for the Informix system
> catalog? I imagine I could answer my first question above if I knew which
> catalog tables to look in.
>