"Describe Object" on the "General" tab of the ribbon opens a window with everything the connection knows about one table, view, function or procedure. The same window opens from the [[Invantive Query Tool/Available Objects|Available Objects]] tree, which is the shorter route: the object under the cursor there is the one described. ## The Pages Which pages are shown follows from what kind of object it is: - "General": what the object is, where it lives - the data container, the catalog and the schema - and the description the platform gives it. - "Columns": one row per column, with the data type as the platform states it and as Invantive UniversalSQL sees it, whether it may be empty, whether it is part of the key, and what the column is for. - "Parameters": the parameters of a table function or of a procedure, with their types and their defaults. A table which is not a table function has no such page. - "Source": the definition behind the object, for a view or a procedure which has one. - "Statistics": what has been read from and written to the object in this session, and how long that took. - "Data": the first rows, so the columns can be read against real values without writing a statement. The rows are read when the page is opened and not before, so describing an object costs nothing until the page is asked for. The page is offered for any object the connection can select from without being given a parameter first, whichever platform it lives on. - "Data Cache": how the object stands in the [[Invantive UniversalSQL/Invantive Data Cache/Invantive Data Cache|Invantive Data Cache]], where one is configured. ## What It Is For The window answers the three questions a statement starts with: what is this called exactly, which columns does it have, and what do they hold. Reading it beats guessing from a name, because the name of a column in a cloud platform is rarely the name of the field in its own user interface, and the description on "Columns" is where the two are tied together.