Sidebar Search

A database connection can hold hundreds of schemas and thousands of tables, and a bucket can hold far more objects than anyone scrolls through. The Databases and Cloud sections of the sidebar each have a search box under their header.

Filter as you type

Type part of a name, in any case. The tree narrows at once to the entries that match:

• A table, object or folder whose name matches stays visible.
• A schema, catalog or folder with a match somewhere below it opens by itself, so the match is on screen without clicking.
• A schema or folder whose own name matches shows everything inside it.
• Connections always stay listed, because a search starts from them.

This only looks at what the tree has already loaded, the parts you have opened before. It needs no network, so it is instant.

Search all

Press Enter in the search box, or click Search all, to look through the parts you have not opened yet. Octa walks the connections you have expanded in the background:

• Databases: every table of every expanded connection (and of every catalog, for Trino, Snowflake, Databricks and BigQuery). Most engines answer with one catalogue query per connection or per catalog, so this takes seconds even on a warehouse with hundreds of schemas. BigQuery, Athena, and a catalog without an information_schema (a Databricks hive_metastore) are walked schema by schema instead, which stops after 500 schemas.
• Cloud: every file and folder below the root of every expanded connection. For a connection to a whole account, it searches inside the buckets you have opened. It stops after 10,000 objects. A search matches names; type a / and it matches the whole path instead, so 2024/sales finds everything in a sales folder under 2024.

While it runs, a spinner shows under the box with a Cancel button next to it. Cancel stops the search at once, including a long walk through a big bucket, and drops what it had found so far.

The results appear as a list under the search box, each with where it lives. Click a table or file to open it, exactly as clicking it in the tree would. Click a folder (shown with a trailing /) and the tree opens down to it. When the walk stopped at its limit the list says so; type more of the name to narrow it.

Only expanded connections are searched. Opening a connection is what connects to it, and a connection you have not opened may need a sign-in, so the search never does that behind your back. A connection that fails is reported, and does not hide what the others found.

Changing the text in the box clears the result list, and the clear button next to the box empties both.