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A view is nothing more than a SQLite statement that is stored in the database with an associated name. It is actually a composition of a table in the form of a predefined SQLite query.
A view can contain all rows of a table or selected rows from one or more tables. A view can be created from one or many tables which depends on the written SQLite query to create a view.
Views which are kind of virtual tables, allow the users to −
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Structure data in a way that users or classes of users find natural or intuitive.
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Restrict access to the data such that a user can only see limited data instead of a complete table.
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Summarize data from various tables, which can be used to generate reports.
SQLite views are read-only and thus you may not be able to execute a DELETE, INSERT or UPDATE statement on a view. However, you can create a trigger on a view that fires on an attempt to DELETE, INSERT, or UPDATE a view and do what you need in the body of the trigger.
Creating Views
SQLite views are created using the CREATE VIEW statement. SQLite views can be created from a single table, multiple tables, or another view.
Following is the basic CREATE VIEW syntax.
CREATE [TEMP | TEMPORARY] VIEW view_name AS SELECT column1, column2..... FROM table_name WHERE [condition];
You can include multiple tables in your SELECT statement in a similar way as you use them in a normal SQL SELECT query. If the optional TEMP or TEMPORARY keyword is present, the view will be created in the temp database.
Example
Consider COMPANY table with the following records −
ID NAME AGE ADDRESS SALARY ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- 1 Paul 32 California 20000.0 2 Allen 25 Texas 15000.0 3 Teddy 23 Norway 20000.0 4 Mark 25 Rich-Mond 65000.0 5 David 27 Texas 85000.0 6 Kim 22 South-Hall 45000.0 7 James 24 Houston 10000.0
Following is an example to create a view from COMPANY table. This view will be used to have only a few columns from COMPANY table.
sqlite> CREATE VIEW COMPANY_VIEW AS SELECT ID, NAME, AGE FROM COMPANY;
You can now query COMPANY_VIEW in a similar way as you query an actual table. Following is an example −
sqlite> SELECT * FROM COMPANY_VIEW;
This will produce the following result.
ID NAME AGE ---------- ---------- ---------- 1 Paul 32 2 Allen 25 3 Teddy 23 4 Mark 25 5 David 27 6 Kim 22 7 James 24
Dropping Views
To drop a view, simply use the DROP VIEW statement with the view_name. The basic DROP VIEW syntax is as follows −
sqlite> DROP VIEW view_name;
The following command will delete COMPANY_VIEW view, which we created in the last section.
sqlite> DROP VIEW COMPANY_VIEW;
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