Question about views

Hi....I have a question about views that I hoped someone could answer for me. We currently have an SQL query that joins 4 tables and is taking too long to execute. In trying to determine how to fix it, someone mentioned that we should create a view and use the view in the query instead of the joined tables. My question is, Can a view improve the performance of a query? It was my understanding that a view was only a logical structure and did not create anything physical, like a table or index does. I thought that when someone executes a query against a view, the database just combines your query with the query that was used to create the view, so there is no performance improvement. Am I incorrect in my thinking? Thanks in advance and I hope this wasn't too stupid of a question. If possible could you also respond via email, since this newsgroup gets a lot of traffic and I don't want to overlook your responses.

Thanks,
Michael Twaddell
twaddell_at_ti.com Received on Thu Mar 12 1998 - 00:00:00 CST