Discussion on: View, a solution to slow complex queries?

[Evaldas Buinauskas]

Views in relational databases consume no space, they're basically just named reusable queries.

What you described above is usually called material (indexed) view in SQL databases. In a nutshell, this creates an actual table behind the scenes and keeps it up to date. You really are trading space and computational resources for faster reads. It depends if it makes sense to do that on your use case. 🙂

[Pacharapol Withayasakpunt]

So, views are equally slow if they are complex?

[Evaldas Buinauskas]

Yes.

This happens behind the scenes.

SELECT *
FROM complex_custom_view;

Is same as

SELECT *
FROM (complex_custom_query) AS T;