6.5. How VIEWs Are Handled in the Database System

Standard SQL requires a system schema table with the text of the VIEW declarations in it. What would be handy, but is not easily done in all SQL implementations, is to trace the VIEWs down to their base tables by printing out a tree diagram of the nested structure. You should check your user library and see if it has such a utility program (for example, FINDVIEW in the SPARC library for SQL/DS). There are several ways to handle VIEWs, and systems will often use a mixture of them. The major categories of algorithms are materialization and in-line text expansion.

6.5.1. VIEW Column List

The <view column list> is optional; when it is not given, the VIEW will inherit the column names from the query ...

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