<p>As in subject... is there a way of looking at an empty table schema without inserting any rows and issuing a SELECT?</p>

Are you looking for
DESCRIBE
?
```
db2 describe table user1.department
```
```
```
Table: USER1.DEPARTMENT

Column             Type        Type
name               schema      name               Length   Scale    Nulls
------------------ ----------- ------------------ -------- -------- --------
AREA               SYSIBM      SMALLINT                  2        0 No
DEPT               SYSIBM      CHARACTER                 3        0 No
DEPTNAME           SYSIBM      CHARACTER                20        0 Yes
```
```