Why do you create a View in a database?

Question

When and Why does some one decide that they need to create a View in their database? Why not just run a normal stored procedure or select?

Answer 1

The one major advantage of a view over a stored procedure is that you can use a view just like you use a table. Namely, a view can be referred to directly in the FROM clause of a query. E.g., SELECT * FROM dbo.name_of_view.

In just about every other way, stored procedures are more powerful. You can pass in parameters, including out parameters that allow you effectively to return several values at once, you can do SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE operations, etc. etc.

If you want a View's ability to query from within the FROM clause, but you also want to be able to pass in parameters, there's a way to do that too. It's called a table-valued function.

Here's a pretty useful article on the topic:

http://databases.aspfaq.com/database/should-i-use-a-view-a-stored-procedure-or-a-user-defined-function.html

EDIT: By the way, this sort of raises the question, what advantage does a view have over a table-valued function? I don't have a really good answer to that, but I will note that the T-SQL syntax for creating a view is simpler than for a table-valued function, and users of your database may be more familiar with views.