What are views in SQL? How are they useful?

In SQL, a view is a virtual table based on the result-set of an SQL statement. A view contains rows and columns, just like a real table. The fields in a view are fields from one or more real tables in the database.

Use of a View Views are used for security purposes because they provide encapsulation of the name of the table. Data is in the virtual table, not stored permanently. Views display only selected data. We can also use Sql Join s in the Select statement in deriving the data for the view.