Question:
I’ve got a “new user” question for you. Some of the tables in our databaseshave several columns containing data that’s not used very often. When I’musing ad-hoc queries, it gets cumbersome to scroll around, and I would gocrazy if I had to type specific column names each time. I’m sure there must be a more elegant solution. Can you help?
Answer:
Don’t worry, it’s not only the new users who haven’t discovered the power ofviews. Check out the CREATE VIEW statement. When you create a view, you’llspecify only once the columns you want to use. From that point forward, you canuse the view the same way you were using the original table. You can issue querieson the view and greatly reduce the problems you’ve described. Views can be usedto hide sensitive data, or to construct a “window” onto the database that fits aparticular user’s interaction. For instance, each department in your organizationmight work with a different view of the same base table. You also can use viewsto specify a join so that data physically residing in two or more separate tables appears as if it resides in one place. Views can be used in many other ways,limited only by your imagination.
