About VIEWS

 

One of my friend ask me about view, I know that everyone has the solid idea related to view in MS SQL server. This article is dedicated to the learners who want to know about view. In my article I am trying to make it simple as possible to understand.

 

So what is a VIEW?

A view is a virtual table that consists of columns from one or more tables. Though it is similar to a table, it is stored in the database. It is a query stored as an object. Hence, a view is an object that derives its data from one or more tables. These tables are referred to as base or underlying tables.

Once you have defined a view, you can reference it like any other table in a database.

A view serves as a security mechanism. This ensures that users are able to retrieve and modify only the data seen by them. Users cannot see or access the remaining data in the underlying tables. A view also serves as a mechanism to simplify query execution. Complex queries can be stored in the form as a view, and data from the view can be extracted using simple queries.

Views ensure the security of data by restricting access to the following data:

• Specific rows of the tables.
• Specific columns of the tables.
• Specific rows and columns of the tables.
• Rows fetched by using joins.
• Statistical summary of data in a given tables.
• Subsets of another view or a subset of views and tables.

Some common examples of views are:

• A subset of rows or columns of a base table.
• A union of two or more tables.
• A join of two or more tables.
• A statistical summary of base tables.
• A subset of another view, or some combination of views and base table

Type of VIEWS

There are 3 type of view that we can create.

Standard View

Combining data from one or more tables through a standard view lets you satisfy most of the benefits of using views. These include focusing on specific data and simplifying data manipulation.  Indexed Views

Indexed View

An indexed view is a view that has been materialized. This means it has been computed and stored. You index a view by creating a unique clustered index on it. Indexed views dramatically improve the performance of some types of queries. Indexed views work best for queries that aggregate many rows. They are not well-suited for underlying data sets that are frequently updated.  

Partitioned Views

A partitioned view joins horizontally partitioned data from a set of member tables across one or more servers. This makes the data appear as if from one table. A view that joins member tables on the same instance of SQL Server is a local partitioned view.

SQL CREATE VIEW Examples

If you have the Northwind database you can see that it has several views installed by default.

The view "Current Product List" lists all active products (products that are not discontinued) from the "Products" table. The view is created with the following SQL:

CREATE VIEW [Current Product List] AS

SELECT ProductID,ProductName

FROM Products

WHERE Discontinued='No'

 

We can query the view above as follows:

SELECT * FROM [Current Product List]

Another view in the Northwind sample database selects every product in the "Products" table with a unit price higher than the average unit price:

CREATE VIEW [Products Above Average Price] AS

SELECT ProductName,UnitPrice

FROM Products

WHERE UnitPrice>(SELECT AVG(UnitPrice) FROM Products)

 

We can query the view above as follows:

SELECT * FROM [Products Above Average Price]

Another view in the Northwind database calculates the total sale for each category in 1997. Note that this view selects its data from another view called "Product Sales for 1997":

CREATE VIEW [Category Sales For 1997] AS

SELECT DISTINCT CategoryName,Sum(ProductSales) AS CategorySales

FROM [Product Sales for 1997]

GROUP BY CategoryName

 

We can query the view above as follows:

SELECT * FROM [Category Sales For 1997]

We can also add a condition to the query. Now we want to see the total sale only for the category "Beverages":

SELECT * FROM [Category Sales For 1997]

WHERE CategoryName='Beverages'

 

SQL Updating a View

You can update a view by using the following syntax:

SQL CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW Syntax

CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW view_name AS

SELECT column_name(s)

FROM table_name

WHERE condition

 

Now we want to add the "Category" column to the "Current Product List" view. We will update the view with the following SQL:

CREATE VIEW [Current Product List] AS

SELECT ProductID,ProductName,Category

FROM Products

WHERE Discontinued=No

 

SQL Dropping a View

You can delete a view with the DROP VIEW command.

SQL DROP VIEW Syntax

DROP VIEW view_name

Special NOTE:

Remember the ORDER BY clause is not directily used in the view. For example if you want to create a view and used order by clause it gives you and error msg.

Msg 1033, Level 15, State 1, Procedure abc, Line 3

The ORDER BY clause is invalid in views, inline functions, derived tables, subqueries, and common table expressions, unless TOP or FOR XML is also specified.

But you can still use ORDER BY with view by TOP 100 PERCENT like this

  

CREATE VIEW [ViewName]

AS

SELECT  TOP 100 PERCENT itemcode, itemdescr

FROM item_master ORDER BY itemdescr

Hope this article is quite informative and thanking you to provide your valuable time on it.

 

Posted by: MR. JOYDEEP DAS