CREATE VIEW <view name> AS <SELECT Statement>

View is a virtual table. You can use view to see certain fields or records from a table. You can create VIEW with the CREATE VIEW command. The following SQL statement creates an Employee_VIEW view that only allows user to see EmployeeID, FirstName and LastName from Employee table.

CREATE VIEW Employee_VIEW AS    SELECT EmpID, FirstName, LastName FROM Employee

Table: Employee

EmpID	FirstName	LastName	Address	City	Country	Phone
EMP001	Maria	Anders	Obere Str. 57	Berlin	Germany	030-0074321
EMP002	Ernst	Handel	Kirchgasse 6	Graz	Austria	7675-3425
EMP003	Helen	Bennett	Garden House Crowther Way	Cowes	UK	(198) 555-8888
EMP004	Paula	Wilson	2817 Milton Dr.	Albuquerque	USA	(505) 555-5939
EMP005	Wong	Liu	55 Grizzly Peak Rd.	Butte	USA	(406) 555-5834

View: Employee_VIEW

EmpID	FirstName	LastName
EMP001	Maria	Anders
EMP002	Ernst	Handel
EMP003	Helen	Bennett
EMP004	Paula	Wilson
EMP005	Wong	Liu

After creating the view, you can use VIEW as the normal table.

SELECT * FROM Employe_VIEW WHERE EmployeeID = 'EMP003'

The above SQL statement will returns the following Resultset.

ResultSet1

EmpID	FirstName	LastName
EMP003	Helen	Bennett

Besides limiting the number of columns that can be seen, you can also create VIEW that limits the number of records that can be seen. Let's look at the following example:

CREATE VIEW Employee_VIEW_Rec AS    SELECT * FROM Employee WHERE FirstName = 'Paula'

 
View: Employee_VIEW_Rec

EmpID	FirstName	LastName	Address	City	Country	Phone
EMP004	Paula	Wilson	2817 Milton Dr.	Albuquerque	USA	(505) 555-5939