Are Views automatically updated

Question

If I JOIN or CROSS APPLY two tables and create a VIEW, will the view automatically gets updated when I update either of the two tables or I add records to either of them?

Will these new records show up in the VIEW?

Answer 1

Yes, they are updated, every time you use them.

I think Microsoft sums up what a View is quite clearly:

A view can be thought of as either a virtual table or a stored query.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa214068%28v=sql.80%29.aspx

Views are not automatically cached.

When you SELECT from a view, the database has to run the query stored in the view to get the result set to use in your statement

The data you 'see' in a view, is not actually stored anywhere, and is generated from the tables on the fly.

Because of this be careful running views which are very complex. Always take into account that the view will have to be executed before its result set is accessed.

Answer 2

A view is basically a stored query, it holds no data so no, it won't get updated when the tables it's built on are. However as soon as you reference the view the query it's based on will run, so you will see the changes made to the base tables.