What do the terms catalog, schemaPattern, tableNamePattern, and types stand for in DatabaseMetaData.getTables()?
Created May 7, 2012
Alessandro A. Garbagnati Let's start from the last one. TableName is the name of a Table; Schema is the name of the container of tables ( some DBMSes normally call it 'user' ) and Catalog is a collection of Schemas ( some DBMS normally refer to it as Database ).
The word 'pattern' is just added to underline that you can insert not just a fixed name, but a pattern to narrow your search.
For example, if I use "", I will get back all the tables for the given Schema, in the given Catalog, while if I use "TAB%" I'll get a list of all the tables whose name starts with "TAB".