# Database management

Database Management is an administrative catalog for an external PostgreSQL schema. It is separate
from workspace preprocessing and, today, does not change the DWH binding used by the NL→SQL
session workflow.

## What the catalog owns

For each YAML workspace, an administrator may create at most one database configuration. It holds
the database name, schema, connection binding, write-only encrypted secrets, observed physical
schema, optional curated descriptions, generated descriptions, and durable operation history.

It does **not** become the external source of truth. Tables, columns, types, defaults,
nullability, primary-key positions, and ordered foreign-key pairs are observations of the source
schema and cannot be manually created, renamed, or structurally edited. Descriptions are the
editable metadata.

## Configure and test a database

1. Open **Database Management** and choose a workspace.
2. Create its PostgreSQL configuration. Choose `postgres_direct`, `rest_api`, or `ssh_tunnel` and
   complete the binding fields that the chosen transport requires.
3. Enter secrets only when replacing them. They remain write-only and are never returned by the
   application.
4. Run **Test connection** before any synchronization.

SSH uses a private key, optional key passphrase, mandatory `known_hosts`, and optional PostgreSQL
TLS CA/server name. REST prefers `POST /rpc/schema_snapshot`; when it is absent, the catalog may
use the same strict v1 snapshot through one read-only `POST /rpc/run_query`. An unavailable
capability, malformed snapshot, or connector error applies no catalog changes. See the
[schema snapshot contract](../contracts/catalog-schema-snapshot.md).

## Synchronize authoritative schema metadata

Start a synchronization from a database or a selected table set. The available scopes are tables,
columns, relationships, and all. One database can have only one active catalog operation at a
time; cleanup shares this exclusion.

The run scans first and publishes a durable operation. If it detects a destructive difference, it
requires confirmation and re-scans before applying. You can cancel before apply; completed and
failed runs remain in history. The live log is delivered over SSE with a polling fallback.

Explicit cleanup is different from source synchronization: administrators can clear selected
table/relationship or column/relationship catalog metadata without changing the external source,
the connection binding, or secrets. Deleting a table cascades to its columns and relationships.

## Generate and consolidate descriptions

Generated descriptions can be requested for selected tables, selected columns, every eligible
target, or targets with a missing generated description. The backend accepts one installation-wide
run and processes targets sequentially. Every catalog column has a **Sensitive** flag, which defaults
to `false`, including after a newly discovered column is synchronized. Before generation, an
administrator can ask the configured model to suggest flags from structural metadata only (database,
schema, table and column names, data types, nullability, primary keys, and foreign keys). Suggestions
remain an unsaved draft until a human reviews and saves them.

For a column with `sensitive=false`, the worker may read at most five source rows and five
representative non-null values through a read-only connector. For `sensitive=true`, the source query
does not request that column's values; deterministic plausible values derived only from its name and
type take their place in the model prompt. The prompt does not identify those values as synthetic, so
the model can still describe the field as if it had received representative data.

Each successful result is persisted immediately. Stop terminates the active helper but retains
earlier results. A helper has at most one provider retry; three consecutively exhausted technical
batches fail the run. Stale queued/running work is marked interrupted at startup and can be
unlocked only when no local worker/helper is live. There is no automatic resume and no public
description-generation CLI.

Review generated text before copying it into the curated **Description** field. Because the flag
defaults to `false`, an administrator must review the classification and mark protected fields before
starting generation. Changing a flag affects future generations only; existing generated or curated
descriptions are not regenerated. Real and substituted samples remain transient and are not persisted
or returned to the browser.

The decisions behind this surface are [ADRs 0001–0011](../adr/0001-postgres-metadata-catalog.md)
and the detailed acceptance record is
[AI catalog description generation acceptance](../testing/2026-08-29-ai-catalog-description-generation-acceptance.md).