Unable to describe table in oracle
I suspect that you did not execute this command with sqlplus. Not every sql program can handle the desc command.

You can either use sqlplus or get the table definition with the following SQL command:

SELECT dbms_metadata.get_ddl (object_type, object_name, owner)
FROM   all_objects
WHERE  owner = '&lt;owner&gt;'
  AND  object_name LIKE '&lt;whatever_table&gt;%';


This will give you the complete table definition with all column definitions.