Switching from MySQL -- Missing DESCRIBE table, SHOW TABLES

Hello,

I had employed MySQL for a couple of former projects. But now have
decided to switch to PostgreSQL...not that version 8 also works on that,
ahem...other OS...which I'm stuck with at work.

But alas, two of the most useful commands appear to be missing:

SHOW TABLES
DESCRIBE table

Inasmuch as my prototyping DB is on my NetBSD server at home while my
data waiting to be 'based is at work...such that I have to connect via
Perl/DBI and XML-RPC (not psql, alas). The IT dept here just says, "Use
MS-Access", so no help there.

While I'm in the innitial stage I need an informative way to blunder
around and see what's what as I try different ways to build this thing.
For that I had always relied on the two above from MySQL.

I can't believe there is no way for PostgreSQL to tell me what the
current DB's table structure is via simple SQL queries executed remotely.

Surely there must be. But I can't seem to find out from the couple of
books I have. All I dug up was some ultra-lame hack to get column names
for an already known table name by doing a "WHERE 1 != 1" or some such
so that no actual rows could be returned. Not very informative, that.
Surely I've missed the point, somewhere.

So enlighten me, please. What, pray tell, are the PostgreSQL-ish SQL
queries one uses so as to explore a given DB's table structure? What is
the PostgreSQL translation for "SHOW TABLES" and "DESCRIBE table"?

Thanks in advance,

Gan Starling
Kalamazoo MI