Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 Unleashed, Second Edition

Using Views to Simplify Retrieval of Data

When querying data, it is often required that complex joins, aggregates, functions, and so on, be written in to the SELECT statement to produce the desired results. To mask this complexity, the SELECT statement can be created as a view, and then future queries can be performed against the view. The information_schema views provided by Microsoft are a prime example of this use of a view. Because the system tables used to store metadata are quite complex, developing queries to retrieve information about SQL Server can be a daunting task. By querying the information_schema views instead of the system tables, you can simplify your SELECT statements. Following is a simple SELECT statement to query the information_schema.table_privileges ...