Question

I’m using a restricted querying tool. is there something that just returns one row, returning a boolean say whether a certain object is a view or a table.

Answer 1

You can query the data dictionary

SELECT object_type
  FROM all_objects
 WHERE owner = <<owner of object>>
   AND object_name = <<name of object>>

will return you the object_type of all the objects that have a particular name that you have access to. Normally, there will just be one row returned but occasionally there will be two. A materialized view, for example, will have a table and a materialized view that share the same name. A package and a package body will also have the same name.