Show Describe instead of source on object hover

Is there a way to get a description of an object when I hover over it in the editor instead of the source code for the object? I know I can get the list of columns and data types from the database explorer but that takes extra steps and is frankly, kludgy.  Seeing the documentation/source code for an object in a pop-up window or even off to the side is almost always useless.

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5 comments

Hi, 

What DBMS are you connecting to?

In what form do you want to view the description? Can you provide an actual example?

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The form should be a hover/pop-up window that replaces the (useless) source code window. The information should be displayed as a 2-column table with the following format.

  1. Attribute/Column Name
  2. Attribute/Column Datatype (datatype length)

I currently connect to Oracle but this is not a database type dependent request. Again, displaying the source of the object on hover is useless…. 

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Why do you think showing source code is useless? It is basically the same information that you want, only wrapped into a CREATE statement. If you resize the popup to fit the contents, the columns all line up making it fairly readable.

Is my understanding correct that your gripe is with the overall popup design, and that you would simply like to make it less cluttered by stripping everything except the ‘column + data type’ info from the current implementation that shows source code?

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The most relevant reason is that showing the source code on hover does not provide any immediately actionable information. The information most relevant in the moment is the list of attributes and data types.  A source code view does not provide this immediately relevant information for several reasons. This is true for views which lack type and length information in their definition. The problem is even worse for procedures and functions which if this information is available at all it may be distributed across the code or even hidden inside a custom type

Oracle as per usual makes attribute and type information even more difficult to obtain via viewing source thanks to packages and the various type differences between SQL and PL/SQL.

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Thanks for the explanation. You are welcome to follow https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/DBE-20916
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