I am facing same problem. when I do a desc <object>, I get the output correctly.
but I still get below exception
Exception in
thread "main" java.sql.SQLException: Fail to construct descriptor: Unable to resolve type: "SMSREQ.ACTIONPRIORITY"
at oracle.jdbc.driver.DatabaseError.throwSqlException(DatabaseError.java:112)
at oracle.jdbc.driver.DatabaseError.throwSqlException(DatabaseError.java:146)