Can someone explain to me what views or materialized views are in plain everyday English please? I've been reading about materialized views but I don't understand.
Sure.
A normal view is a query that defines a virtual table -- you don't actually have the data sitting in the table, you create it on the fly by executing.
A materialized view is a view where the query gets run and the data gets saved in an actual table.
The data in the materialized view gets refreshed when you tell it to.
A couple use cases:
We have multiple Oracle instances where we want to have the master data on one instance, and a reasonably current copy of the data on the other instances. We don't want to assume that the database links between them will always be up and operating. So we set up materialized views on the other instances, with queries like select a,b,c from mytable#master and tell them to refresh daily.
Materialized views are also useful in query rewrite. Let's say you have a fact table in a data warehouse with every book ever borrowed from a library, with dates and borrowers. And that staff regularly want to know how many times a book has been borrowed. Then build a materialized view as select book_id, book_name, count(*) as borrowings from book_trans group by book_id, book_name, set it for whatever update frequency you want -- usually the update frequency for the warehouse itself. Now if somebody runs a query like that for a particular book against the book_trans table, the query rewrite capability in Oracle will be smart enough to look at the materialized view rather than walking through the millions of rows in book_trans.
Usually, you're building materialized views for performance and stability reasons -- flaky networks, or doing long queries off hours.
A view is basically a "named" SQL statement. You can reference views in your queries much like a real table. When accessing the view, the query behind the view is executed.
For example:
create view my_counter_view(num_rows) as
select count(*)
from gazillion_row_table;
select num_rows from my_counter_view;
Views can be used for many purposes such as providing a simpler data model, implement security constraints, SQL query re-use, workaround for SQL short comings.
A materialized view is a view where the query has been executed and the results has been stored as a physical table. You can reference a materialized view in your code much like a real table. In fact, it is a real table that you can index, declare constraints etc.
When accessing a materialized view, you are accessing the pre-computed results. You are NOT executing the underlaying query. There are several strategies for how to keeping the materialized view up-to-date. You will find them all in the documentation.
Materialized views are rarely referenced directly in queries. The point is to let the optimizer use "Query Rewrite" mechanics to internally rewrite a query such as the COUNT(*) example above to a query on the precomputed table. This is extremely powerful as you don't need to change the original code.
There are many uses for materialied views, but they are mostly used for performance reasons. Other uses are: Replication, complicated constraint checking, workarounds for deficiencies in the optimizer.
Long version: -> Oracle documentation
A view is a query on one or more tables. A view can be used just like a table to select from or to join with other tables or views. A metrialized view is a view that has been fully evaluated and its rows have been stored in memory or on disk. Therefore each time you select from a materialized view, there is no need to perform the query that produces the view and the results are returned instantly.
For example, a view may be a query such as SELECT account, SUM(payment) FROM payments GROUP BY account with a large number of payments in the table but not many accounts. Each time this view is used the whole table must be read. With a materialized view, the result is returned instantly.
The non-trivial issue with materialized views is to update them when the underlying data is changed. In this example, each time a new row is added to the payments table, the row in the materialized view that represents the account needs to be updated. These updates may happen synchronously or periodically.
Yes. Materialized views are views with a base table underneath them. You define the view and Oracle creates the base table underneath it automatically.
By executing the view and placing the resulting data in the base table you gain performance.
They are useful for a variety of reasons. Some examples of why you would use a materialized view are:
1) A view that is complex may take a long time to execute when referenced
2) A view included in complex SQL may yield poor execution plans leading to performance issues
3) You might need to reference data across a slow DBLINK
A materialized view can be setup to refresh periodically.
You can specify a full or partial refresh.
Please see the Oracle documentation for complete information
Related
Would there be something similar as the master-slave database but at the table level in the database?
For example, I have the following scenario:
I have a table with millions of records and the reason is because the system is more than 15 years old.
I only want to show the records of the last year (2019-2020).
I decided to create a view that only shows the records of that range (1 year) from the information of that table that contains millions of records.
Thanks to the view, the loading time of that system screen is lighter, thanks to the fact that I have less load of records.
The problem: What if the user adds a new record to the table that contains millions of records? how do I make my view modify when the other table are modified ...
I can use triggers to update the view I think, but, is there a functionality in oracle that allows me something similar to what I just asked (master-slave) where the "slave" table is updated as the "master" table suffers changes?
First of all, you misunderstood views. View is not a physical table, and does not store any information. If you insert data into view, you are actually inserting into the source table.
Since the view is not physical, you are just filtering the data. This does not have any performance benefits.
For the big tables, you can use partitioning which drastically improves performance. And if you still need archival you can archive the partitioned data.
Partitioning is generally the best method, because you can typically archive data by simply doing an "exchange" command to archive off old data.
Data doesn't "move" in that scenario, it simply gets 'detached' from the table via data dictionary manipulation.
Would there be something similar as the master-slave database but at the table level in the database
If you are asking about master/slave replication on a table level, then,
I suppose, table/materialized view relationship is appropriate to call as a master-slave. Quote from Oracle Docs:
A materialized view is a database object that contains the results of a query. The FROM clause of the query can name tables, views, and other materialized views. Collectively these objects are called master tables (a replication term)...
When you need to "update" or, more appropriately - refresh the mview, you can use different options:
update mview periodically and refresh it periodically
update mview each time the data in the master table is changed and commited.
update manually calling DBMS_MVIEW.REFRESH or DBMS_SNAPSHOT.REFRESH
Mview could be faster then view because each time you select from a mview you select from a different "table" which was replicated from the original one. Especially if you have complex logic in a sql, you can put the logic to mview definition.
The drawbacks are you need extra disk space for mview, and there will be a delay of refreshing the data.
I'm interested in understanding more about using a SQL View vs. a local query in MS Access. I like the fact that a view is basically a query that is stored on the server, and local machines running Access "see" it as a table.
Due to performance reasons, I'll sometimes take a view over a query since it typically makes a form load a lot faster. However, I've run into issues where I can't update the view if I make changes in two different fields that are in different base tables. Even if the view is constructed correctly with the correct joins, etc.
Just wondering if there is a more efficient and proper way to construct a query that can be updated.
A user can never update more than one table at a time. That's a given. You need to construct your form (probably using subforms) to represent the data using either single table views, simple views that are updatable, or tables.
Subforms are basically left joins to the parent form. like
SELECT *
FROM ParentForm P
LEFT JOIN SubForm S
ON P.ParentID <~~Link Master Field
= S.ParentID <~~Link Child Field
So you can recreate your view using subforms.
If your view is too complicated to fit this mold it is probably not updatable and it probably means that the data you DO want to update are in a single table but all the rest of the info in your view are supporting information. i.e. displayed to support the user making a decision.
In this case you should make the Record Source of your form be the table/view (which is updatable) that you want to update. Then in comboboxes/listboxes/controls which support the data going into your updatable table/view you make the Row Source that of your complicated view.
No matter where the view is (in Access or on the server) if it is constructed in such a way that it is impossible to determine which record in which table should be changed, nothing else matters. YOu need to design the whole form differently.
I have noticed quite a few mentions of the word "materializing" when people are talking about using temporary tables in SQL Server. Can someone expand on what it is that means? I am just trying to get a better understanding of what that means in terms of using temp tables?
Thanks!
S
The term "materializing" is normally used in the context of a view. When you create a clustered index on a view, you materialize the view; this means that the view's data is stored like a table on disk, and updated automatically when the tables which participate in the view get updated.
If a view is not materialized, SQL Server must compute the data in the view by performing the joins in the view definition every time a query is performed (though the results may be cached, or what-have-you).
I'm not sure the term "materializing" properly applies to temporary tables. The word materialized in a database context implies "caching query results in concrete table that may be updated from the original base tables". Perhaps that is custom internal jargon to indicate converting the results that are in a temp table into a permanent table.
SQL Server doesn't allow creating an view with schema binding where the view query uses OpenQuery as shown below.
Is there a way or a work-around to create an index on such a view?
The best you could do would be to schedule a periodic export of the AD data you are interested in to a table.
The table could of course then have all the indexes you like. If you ran the export every 10 minutes and the possibility of getting data that is 9 minutes and 59 seconds out of date is not a problem, then your queries will be lightning fast.
The only part of concern would be managing locking and concurrency during the export time. One strategy might be to export the data into a new table and then through renames swap it into place. Another might be to use SYNONYMs (SQL 2005 and up) to do something similar where you just point the SYNONYM to two alternating tables.
The data that supplies the query you're performing comes from a completely different system outside of SQL Server. There's no way that SQL Server can create an indexed view on data it does not own. For starters, how would it be notified when something had been changed so it could update its indexes? There would have to be some notification and update mechanism, which is implausible because SQL Server could not reasonably maintain ACID for such a distributed, slow, non-SQL server transaction to an outside system.
Thus my suggestion for mimicking such a thing through your own scheduled jobs that refresh the data every X minutes.
--Responding to your comment--
You can't tell whether a new user has been added without querying. If Active Directory supports some API that generates events, I've never heard of it.
But, each time you query, you could store the greatest creation time of all the users in a table, then through dynamic SQL, query only for new users with a creation date after that. This query should theoretically be very fast as it would pull very little data across the wire. You would just have to look into what the exact AD field would be for the creation date of the user and the syntax for conditions on that field.
If managing the dynamic SQL was too tough, a very simple vbscript, VB, or .Net application could also query active directory for you on a schedule and update the database.
Here are the basics for Indexed views and thier requirements. Note what you are trying to do would probably fall in the category of a Derived Table, therefore it is not possible to create an indexed view using "OpenQuery"
This list is from http://www.sqlteam.com/article/indexed-views-in-sql-server-2000
1.View definition must always return the same results from the same underlying data.
2.Views cannot use non-deterministic functions.
3.The first index on a View must be a clustered, UNIQUE index.
4.If you use Group By, you must include the new COUNT_BIG(*) in the select list.
5.View definition cannot contain the following
a.TOP
b.Text, ntext or image columns
c.DISTINCT
d.MIN, MAX, COUNT, STDEV, VARIANCE, AVG
e.SUM on a nullable expression
f.A derived table
g.Rowset function
h.Another view
i.UNION
j.Subqueries, outer joins, self joins
k.Full-text predicates like CONTAIN or FREETEXT
l.COMPUTE or COMPUTE BY
m.Cannot include order by in view definition
In this case, there is no way for SQL Server to know of any changes (data, schema, whatever) in the remote data source. For a local table, it can use SCHEMABINDING etc to ensure the underlying tables(s) stay the same and it can track datachanges.
If you need to query the view often, then I'd use a local table that is refreshed periodically. In fact, I'd use a table anyway. AD queries are't the quickest at the best of times...
We have an indexed view that runs across three large tables. Two of these tables (A & B) are constantly getting updated with user transactions and the other table (C) contains data product info that is needs to be updated once a week. This product table contains over 6 million records.
We need this view across these three tables for our core business process and unfortunately we cannot change this aspect. We even had a sql server MVP come in to help test under load to make sure we have the most efficient configuration. There is one column in the product table that gets utilized in the view and has to be updated each week.
The problem we are now encountering is that as volume is increasing on our transactions against tables A & B, the update to Table C is causing deadlocks.
I have tried several different methods to no avail:
1) I was hoping that we could change the view so that table C could be a dirty read "WITH (NOLOCK)" but apparently that functionality is not available with indexes views.
2) I thought about updating a new column in Table C and then just renaming it when the process is done but you cannot do that due to the dependency in the view.
3) I also entertained the idea of writing this value to a temporary product table, and then running an ALTER statement against the view to have it point to my new table. however when i did that the indexes on my view were dropped and it took quite a bit of time to recreate them.
4) we tried to do the weekly update in small chunks (as small as 100 records at a time) but we still run into dead locks.
questions:
a) we are using sql server 2005. Does sql server 2008 have a new functionality with their indexed views that would help us? Is there now a way to do dirty reads w/ an indexed view?
b) a better approach to altering an existing view to point to a new table?
thanks!
The issue you're experiencing is that adding the indexed view between the three tables is causing lock contention. There is a really good post about the issue here : http://sqlblog.com/blogs/alexander_kuznetsov/archive/2009/06/02/be-ready-to-drop-your-indexed-view.aspx
Partitioning the table might provide some relief, although I don't know if the partitioning will circumvent the lock issue. You will have to upgrade to 2008 if you want to investigate this option however - as you need to use partition-aligned indexed views. 2005 will require you to drop the view before you swap in/out any partitions.
More information about partition-aligned indexed views: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd171921.aspx
Have you considered making C a partitioned table and swapping in/out a partition as your price update mechanism? I'm not sure how that would work with an indexed view - I would think the index needs to be rebuilt at that point. I think this is probably the same situation you are seeing with the ALTER TABLE, actually.
Is the indexed view really necessary? i.e. could appropriate indexes on the 3 underlying tables perform just as well when a normal view is used? Remember that the indexed view may have to be updated on key changes to any of the three tables, while a index on a single table would only have to be updated if a key changes or data moves in just that table. Typically indexed views are indexed on different columns than the base tables because it is a different kind of section accross the data than is available in the underlying tables - does that description really apply?
How long does the pricing update take? This would appear to be the core of your problem, but it's hard to say without more information.
We can try this for avoid locking.
SELECT a,b,c FROM indexedview as v WITH (NOEXPAND,NOLOCK) WHERE ...