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

It can function as a good "middle man" between your ORM and your tables.

Example:

We had a Person table that we needed to change the structure on it so the column SomeColumn was going to be moved to another table and would have a one to many relationship to.

However, the majority of the system, with regards to the Person, still used the SomeColumn as a single thing, not many things. We used a view to bring all of the SomeColumns together and put it in the view, which worked out nicely.

This worked because the data layer had changed, but the business requirement hadn't fundamentally changed, so the business objects didn't need to change. If the business objects had to change I don't think this would have been a viable solution, but views definitely function as a good mid point.