There are two parts to this answer:

First, views: Nobody needs views, except as a convenience. Views are macros that expand to queries. Thus,

Example A:

CREATE VIEW myView AS
SELECT account,
SUM(amount)
FROM accounts
GROUP BY account;

SELECT * FROM myView;

Example B:

SELECT account,
SUM(amount)
FROM accounts
GROUP BY account;

Both of these take the same amount of time, because they’re both the same query.

Part 2:

The real question is whether your indeces are good enough. In a lightly writing, heavily reading system, you pretty much want and index for everything you’re searching on. In a system that reads and writes a lot, you have to experiment as to whether each non-obvious index is worth it.

In most tools, there’s an ANALYZE QUERY or EXPLAIN PLAN menu option. Use it on each query. If you find an index range scan, a table scan, or too many hashes, then you need to add an index.

In Oracle, you may have to add HINTs. (Search for HINT or “/*+”. In DB2, it will handle optimization for you.

—
Sheldon Linker
Linker Systems, Inc.
www.linkersystems.com
sol@linker.com
800-315-1174
+1-949-552-1904