Views allow you to create a stored way of looking at the information in your table. When you create a view, you create a way of querying the database table not only today, but also in the future. You can come back to a view and recall it, producing updated results.

In this module, you will find out how views are created, how they apply to your query and reporting requirements, and how you can use views to make your queries easier in the future.
Since views are a server- or engine-based element, they are can be heavily engine-dependent. There may be some slight differences in how views are implemented in your engine, and those differences will be called out whenever possible during these lessons.

A simple view can be thought of as a subset of a table. It can be used for retrieving data, as well as updating or deleting rows.
Rows updated or deleted in the view are updated or deleted in the table the view was created with.
It should also be noted that as data in the original table changes, so does data in the view.
This is because a view is not really a table itself, but only a way to look at part of the original table.