Views are virtual tabular variables. This means that in SQL a view is referenced
for retrieval purposes in exactly the same way a tabular variable is referenced.
The only difference is that a view does not have a physical existence. It exists
only as a definition in the database catalog. We refer to “real” tabular variables
(that is, the tabular variables that have a physical existence in the database) as
base tabular variables.
Views are supported in both SQLPlus and in Transact SQL but not in the
current version (4.1) of MySQL.
To illustrate the notion of view, let us consider the following example.
Example 5.23.1 Suppose that we write: