Chapter 12. Views

 

         There is no object on earth which             cannot be looked at from a               cosmic point of view.

 
 --Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky

Topics Covered in This Chapter

  • What Are Views?

  • Anatomy of a View

  • Determining and Establishing Views

  • CASE STUDY

  • Summary

What Are Views?

As you learned in Chapter 3, a View is a virtual table that comprises the fields of one or more tables in the database; it can also include fields from other views. The reason a View is called a virtual table is because it does not store or contain data—it draws its data from the tables or Views upon which it is based. Because a View does not store data, only its structure is saved in the database, and it is re-created each time it is accessed.

Note

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