As you don't tell us what the "Oracle desc command" is supposed to do, I can only guess. Maybe it does "describe" objects in the database. If so, then the Catalog Methods section of the DBI documentation will tell you what to do.

The "desc" command simply describes a table - returning the column names, null or not null and field type. I've tried using "$sth = $dbh->table_info(",,USER\$")" (the table name is USER$) but I'm not getting anything useful from this.

$sth = $dbh->table_info(",,USER\$")
[download]

does not do what you might think it does.

Maybe you wanted to use the following?

$sth = $dbh->table_info('',undef,"USER")
[download]

Maybe, for a first try, leave all the restrictions out and see what ->table_info gives you.

All the information on tables, columns and databases are stored in *SUPRISE* other tables. You can write SQL queries against those system tables to get the information that you are interested without needing any special systems knowledge.

As for the tables that you should be looking at, Try this page to get you started

Have a look at the database handle methods of DBI. Things like table_info() should help.