Inside Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008: T-SQL Programming

Chapter 1. Views

Itzik Ben-Gan

This book is the sequel to Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2008: T-SQL Querying (Microsoft Press, 2009) and I assume that you’ve read its prequel or have equivalent querying knowledge. Throughout the book I will refer to the books in short as T-SQL Querying and T-SQL Programming. The T-SQL programming book focuses on programmatic T-SQL constructs, and I think it makes sense to start with a chapter that covers views—a construct that is considered by some a programmatic construct and by others a querying construct.

This chapter starts with a brief description of views and their uses. As the chapter progresses, I’ll discuss details of working with views. Among other things, I’ll cover the use of views to simplify your queries ...