Documentation
observablehq.com↗

Databases pane and schema viewer ​

Notebooks

The Databases pane provides quick access to and exploration of database connections, cells, and attached files.

Databases pane ​

Open the Databases pane by clicking on the database icon () in the right margin of your browser window:

View of the open Database pane in an Observable notebook, where a user can see existing database connections, database cells, and database files.
Open the Databases pane to view database connections, cells and attached files.

Alternatively, you can open the Databases pane by clicking the database icon in any SQL cell or Data table cell:

Highlighted database icon in the header of a SQL cell. Clicking on the icon will open the Databases pane.
Highlighted database icon in the header of a Data table cell. Clicking on the icon will open the <b>Databases pane</b>.
Click on the database icon to open the Databases pane from any SQL cell (top) or Data table cell (bottom).

Within the Databases pane you can see an explore Database connections, Database cells, and Database files.

  • Database connections: Shows any named databases

  • Database cells: Shows any cells that can be used with SQL cells like named arrays, SQLite databases, and JSON files

  • Database files: Shows any files that can be used as a database, like CSVs, JSON files, and SQLite files

Click the insert icon () to the right of any listed database to insert it into the notebook in a new SQL cell.

The three dot menu to the right of each database name (…) provides options to Refresh schema (see more below) and Insert into notebook. For Database connections there are additional options to Edit details, which will take you to the Databases page in your account Settings, and Copy usage code, which copies the code for the current source for easy pasting into a JavaScript cell.

Expanded menu for Database connections, revealing options to Refresh schema, Insert into notebook, Edit details, and Copy usage code.
In the Databases pane, click the three dot (...) menu to the right of a database name to see more options.

Schema viewer ​

Within the Database pane, you can explore database structure (table and column names) with the Schema viewer.

Click on the database name to see all tables within the database. Below, all tables within the sampleDB database (albums, artists, playlists, etc.) are revealed:

View of database tables within the Databases pane.
See all tables in a database by clicking on the database name in the Databases pane.

To dig a bit deeper, click on any table name to reveal the columns for that table. For example, the artists table in the sampleDB database is expanded below to reveal two variables: ArtistId and Name.

Expanded view of database schema revealing column names within a single table.
Expanded view of database schema.

Recall that you are able to access the Databases pane directly from Data table cells and SQL cells, which allows you to quickly explore the schema for databases you’re currently working with.