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Describe a table - Amazon Redshift

Amazon Redshift will no longer support the use of Python UDFs after June 30, 2026. We will start enforcing it in phases. For more information on the details of Python end of life and migration options, see the blog post that was published on June 30, 2025.

Describe a table

To get metadata that describes a table, use the aws redshift-data describe-table AWS CLI command.

The following AWS CLI command runs a SQL statement against a cluster and returns metadata that describes a table. This example uses the AWS Secrets Manager authentication method.


aws redshift-data describe-table  
    --cluster-identifier mycluster-test 
    --database dev 
    --schema information_schema 
    --table sql_features 
    --secret-arn arn:aws:secretsmanager:us-west-2:123456789012:secret:myuser-secret-hKgPWn

The following is an example of the response.

{
    "ColumnList": [
        {
            "isCaseSensitive": false,
            "isCurrency": false,
            "isSigned": false,
            "length": 2147483647,
            "name": "feature_id",
            "nullable": 1,
            "precision": 2147483647,
            "scale": 0,
            "schemaName": "information_schema",
            "tableName": "sql_features",
            "typeName": "character_data"
        },
        {
            "isCaseSensitive": false,
            "isCurrency": false,
            "isSigned": false,
            "length": 2147483647,
            "name": "feature_name",
            "nullable": 1,
            "precision": 2147483647,
            "scale": 0,
            "schemaName": "information_schema",
            "tableName": "sql_features",
            "typeName": "character_data"
        }     
    ]
}

The following AWS CLI command runs a SQL statement against a cluster that describes a table. This example uses the temporary credentials authentication method.


aws redshift-data describe-table 
    --db-user myuser 
    --cluster-identifier mycluster-test 
    --database dev 
    --schema information_schema 
    --table sql_features

The following is an example of the response.

{
    "ColumnList": [
        {
            "isCaseSensitive": false,
            "isCurrency": false,
            "isSigned": false,
            "length": 2147483647,
            "name": "feature_id",
            "nullable": 1,
            "precision": 2147483647,
            "scale": 0,
            "schemaName": "information_schema",
            "tableName": "sql_features",
            "typeName": "character_data"
        },
        {
            "isCaseSensitive": false,
            "isCurrency": false,
            "isSigned": false,
            "length": 2147483647,
            "name": "feature_name",
            "nullable": 1,
            "precision": 2147483647,
            "scale": 0,
            "schemaName": "information_schema",
            "tableName": "sql_features",
            "typeName": "character_data"
        },
        {
            "isCaseSensitive": false,
            "isCurrency": false,
            "isSigned": false,
            "length": 2147483647,
            "name": "sub_feature_id",
            "nullable": 1,
            "precision": 2147483647,
            "scale": 0,
            "schemaName": "information_schema",
            "tableName": "sql_features",
            "typeName": "character_data"
        },
        {
            "isCaseSensitive": false,
            "isCurrency": false,
            "isSigned": false,
            "length": 2147483647,
            "name": "sub_feature_name",
            "nullable": 1,
            "precision": 2147483647,
            "scale": 0,
            "schemaName": "information_schema",
            "tableName": "sql_features",
            "typeName": "character_data"
        },
        {
            "isCaseSensitive": false,
            "isCurrency": false,
            "isSigned": false,
            "length": 2147483647,
            "name": "is_supported",
            "nullable": 1,
            "precision": 2147483647,
            "scale": 0,
            "schemaName": "information_schema",
            "tableName": "sql_features",
            "typeName": "character_data"
        },
        {
            "isCaseSensitive": false,
            "isCurrency": false,
            "isSigned": false,
            "length": 2147483647,
            "name": "is_verified_by",
            "nullable": 1,
            "precision": 2147483647,
            "scale": 0,
            "schemaName": "information_schema",
            "tableName": "sql_features",
            "typeName": "character_data"
        },
        {
            "isCaseSensitive": false,
            "isCurrency": false,
            "isSigned": false,
            "length": 2147483647,
            "name": "comments",
            "nullable": 1,
            "precision": 2147483647,
            "scale": 0,
            "schemaName": "information_schema",
            "tableName": "sql_features",
            "typeName": "character_data"
        }
    ]
}