Skills#

The Exasol MCP Server exposes domain knowledge as FastMCP skills. Skills are MCP resources that LLM clients can discover and pull in on demand, providing background context without consuming tool-call tokens on every request.

Available Skills#

The following skills are always available. They are discoverable via the MCP resources/list request and accessible via resources/read.

Skill URI	Description
`skill://exasol-sql-dialect/SKILL.md`	Exasol SQL dialect: data types, syntax differences from standard SQL, date/time functions, regex functions, MERGE, CONNECT BY, and common pitfalls.
`skill://exasol-udfs/SKILL.md`	User-Defined Functions and scripts: CREATE SCRIPT syntax, Python/Java/Lua/R language options, the ExaIterator API, BucketFS access from scripts, and Script Language Containers.
`skill://exasol-mcp-server/SKILL.md`	MCP Server tool inventory and usage guide: what each tool does, which tools require configuration flags, and step-by-step workflows for schema exploration, query debugging, BucketFS management, and more.
`skill://exasol-system-tables/SKILL.md`	System and statistics tables: the `EXA_ALL_` / `EXA_DBA_` / `EXA_USER_*` prefix guide, key metadata and performance tables, example queries, and advice on when to query system tables directly vs using MCP tools.
`skill://exasol-table-design/SKILL.md`	Table design for performance: DISTRIBUTE BY and PARTITION BY selection rules, data type choices, replication border, surrogate keys, and CREATE TABLE syntax including LIKE, IDENTITY, and combined distribution/partitioning patterns.
`skill://exasol-import-export/SKILL.md`	IMPORT and EXPORT SQL statements: CSV/FBV/Parquet formats, cloud storage connections (S3, Azure, GCS), wildcard file loading, error handling with REJECT LIMIT, and ETL staging workflows.
`skill://exasol-virtual-schemas/SKILL.md`	Virtual Schemas: connecting external data sources, adapter scripts, supported adapters, privilege requirements, and performance considerations.

How Clients Discover Skills#

MCP clients that support the FastMCP skills protocol call resources/list to enumerate available resources. Resources with URIs of the form skill://{name}/SKILL.md are skills. The client can then call resources/read with that URI to fetch the markdown content.

Claude Code discovers and syncs skills automatically when the MCP server is configured as a provider. Other clients may use fastmcp.utilities.skills.sync_skills() or the equivalent protocol calls.

For clients that do not auto-discover skills (such as Open Code), see Client Integrations for installation instructions and automation examples.