It's because "describe" is not a part of SQL. It is something that Oracle's sqlplus shell implements, not the server. There are other ways to get a list of columns in a table, if that's what you want. Check the DBI docs.

In reply to Re: 'Describe table' doesn't work (Oracle/dbiproxy) by perrin
in thread 'Describe table' doesn't work (Oracle/dbiproxy) by Anonymous Monk

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