What Are Views?
As you learned in Chapter 3, a view is a virtual table composed of fields from one or more tables in the database; it can also include fields from other views. The tables and views that comprise a given view are known as the view's base tables. A view is “virtual” because it draws data from base tables rather than storing data on its own. In fact, the only information about a view that is stored in the database is its structure; the RDBMS rebuilds and “repopulates” the view every time you access the view in some manner. Many major RDBMS programs support views, but some (such as Microsoft Access) refer to them as saved queries. Your specific RDBMS program will determine whether you refer to this object as a query or a view. ...
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