internal handling of views

I was having a discussion with a fellow wherein he remarked that changing a value in one of a view's originating table(s) causes the views defining sql to fire in order to populate the view. I was always under the impression that a view element was a pointer (as in the C programming language) back to the same memory storage as in the underlying table*, i.e no sql, triggers, etc are fired - changing a value is really changing the memory storage, and the table and view are both pointing back to that memory, so one being changed IS (IS as in 'exactly' not 'the same thing as') the other being changed.

So , who's right here (or neither of us)?

CMM

• Put another way: if you could shut down the database, and using some other method, change the value in that memory storage location of the underlying table(so that the value changed, but NOT through anything or any means in Oracle) and then, also without having Oracle or any triggers,sql,etc running, you could somehow look at the value for the view, what would you find there?