Itzik Ben-Gan takes us through views:
As usual when discussing relational theory, we SQL practitioners are often told that the terminology we’re using is wrong. So, in this spirit, right off the bat, I’ll start by saying that when you use the term tables and views, it’s wrong. I’ve learned this from Chris Date.
Recall that a table is SQL’s counterpart to a relation (oversimplifying the discussion around values and variables a bit). A table could be a base table defined as an object in the database, or it could be a table returned by an expression—more specifically, a table expression. That’s similar to the fact that a relation could be one that is returned from a relational expression. A table expression could be a query.
Now, what is a view? It’s a named table expression, much like a CTE is a named table expression. It’s just that like I said, a view is a reusable named table expression that is created as an object in the database, and is accessible to those who have the right permissions. This is all to say, a view is a table. It’s not a base table, but a table nonetheless. So just like saying “a rectangle and a square” or “a whisky and a Lagavulin” would seem strange (unless you had too much Lagavulin!), using “tables and views” is as improper.
Yeah, if we’re going to push our glasses up the bridges of our noses and get all relational here, we’d have the relvar (which is a name and collection of attributes + data types) and the relation (which you can think of as a relvar at a particular point in time—that’s where we get tuples of data). And as Itzik points out, what the RDBMS world calls a view quite neatly fits the definition of a relvar, as we define a name and collection of attributes + data types.
If all of this could not mean less to you, still read the article for Itzik’s view on views.