SQL Server® 2008 Administration: Real World Skills for MCITP Certification and Beyond

Understanding Views

What is a view? A view is a beautiful sight that you sometimes see while driving along a road or highway. They are often marked as scenic overlooks. Someone at some point determined that large numbers of people would be interested in seeing that view, so they built a special location where cars could pull off to the side of the road and people could take in the beauty.

Of course, this section is talking about SQL Server databases and not scenic views; yet a view in a database can also be a beautiful thing—at least to your users. For example, imagine that you have a set of customer data spread across the following tables:

• Customers
• Cities
• States
• Addresses
• Websites

Now, in order to get the complete view of a customer information ...