DESCRIBE ENTITY

Synopsis

DESCRIBE ENTITY <qualified_name>

Description

Shows the complete MDL source for an entity, including its type (persistent, non-persistent, view, external), all attributes with types and constraints, indexes, access rules, and documentation comments. The output is round-trippable MDL that can be used directly in CREATE ENTITY statements.

This is the primary way to inspect the full definition of an entity before modifying it with ALTER ENTITY or recreating it with CREATE OR MODIFY.

Parameters

qualified_name

A Module.EntityName reference identifying the entity to describe. Both the module and entity name are required.

Examples

Describe a customer entity:

DESCRIBE ENTITY Sales.Customer

Example output:

/**
 * Customer entity stores customer information.
 */
@Position(100, 200)
CREATE PERSISTENT ENTITY Sales.Customer (
  /** Customer identifier */
  CustomerId: AutoNumber NOT NULL UNIQUE DEFAULT 1,
  Name: String(200) NOT NULL,
  Email: String(200),
  Status: Enumeration(Sales.CustomerStatus) DEFAULT 'Active'
)
INDEX (Name);

Describe a non-persistent entity:

DESCRIBE ENTITY Sales.CustomerFilter

See Also

SHOW ENTITIES, DESCRIBE ASSOCIATION, DESCRIBE ENUMERATION