Wildcards and Help

The asterisk (*) wildcard can be used to specify all or part of the owner or object name parameters in a Help statement. The Help statement displays only objects to which the user has access, which are:

Objects owned by the user
Objects owned by other users that have granted permissions to the user
Objects owned by the DBA to which you have access

If wildcards are specified for both the owner and object name (*.*), Help displays all objects to which you have access. To display help information about objects you do not own, specify the owner name (using the schema.objectname syntax). If the owner name wildcard is omitted (that is, * is specified instead of *.*), Help displays the objects that can be accessed without the owner prefix.

The following examples illustrate the effects of the wildcard character:

Wildcard	Description
Help *	Display objects owned by the effective user of the session.
Help davey.*	Display all objects owned by davey.
Help *.mytable	Display all objects named, mytable, regardless of owner.
Help d.	Display all objects owned by users beginning with d.
Help .d	Display all objects beginning with d regardless of owner.
Help .	Display all objects regardless of owner.

Permissions

All users are permitted to use this statement.

Locking

The Help statement does not take read locks on system catalogs. As a result, if the Help statement is issued while a Create Schema or Create Table as Select statement is executing, the Help statement can display results that do not reflect the final results of the Create statements.

Related Statements

Create Security_Alarm

Create Synonym

Create Table

Create View

Examples: Help

The following are Help statement examples:

Display a list of all tables, views, and indexes to which the user has access.
help;
Display help about all tables starting with "e" to which the user has access.
help *.e*;
Display help about the employee and dept tables.
help employee, dept;
Display the definition of the view, highpay.
help view highpay;
Display all permits issued on the job and employee tables.
help permit on table job, employee;
Display all integrity constraints issued on the dept and employee tables.
help integrity dept, employee;
Display information on the select statement.
help sql select;