> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.kinetica.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Virtual Catalogs

<a id="sql-vc" />

## Overview

*Kinetica* provides metadata tables, or *virtual catalogs*, as a means of
querying the database for information about its objects, relationships, and
permissions.

*Virtual catalogs* can be used to easily search for database tables & views by
name without knowing the containing schema name, or for database columns by name
without knowing the containing table or view name.  They can be used to generate
reports of the database structure or audit the creation & modification of that
structure.

*Kinetica* provides its [own](/content/catalogs/kinetica#sql-vc-kinetica) set of
*virtual catalog* tables, and supports both [ANSI](/content/catalogs/ansi#sql-vc-ansi) &
[PostgreSQL](/content/catalogs/postgresql#sql-vc-pg) metadata queries.

The information returned when querying the *virtual catalogs* is automatically
filtered by the permissions of the querying user.  For instance, regular users
will only see the tables & views to which they have access when querying a
*virtual catalog* table that lists all of the tables in the database, while
system administrators will see all tables & views.

## Catalog Information

* [Kinetica Virtual Catalog](/content/catalogs/kinetica)
* [ANSI Virtual Catalog](/content/catalogs/ansi) (`INFORMATION_SCHEMA`)
* [PostgreSQL Virtual Catalog](/content/catalogs/postgresql)
* [Useful Catalog Queries](/content/snippets/virtual-catalog-queries)