use of views

I was reading over some best practices yesterday and there is something Im
not too clear on:

For every table defined, at least one view is required. As many other views
may be defined as are necessary. Application software refers to views instea
d
of the tables themselves. This insulates the application from changes that
are made to the underlying tables.


I dont get it. What sort of table changes would this apply too. Do many
people practice this? Any downsides to practicing this?

--
TIA,
ChrisR

Chris,

A view is not required for a table.  That being said views do offer a
variety of advantanges including:  a security abstration layer, code
simplicity, ease of export and insulating schema changes.  What kinds of
changes?  ALTER TABLE...  Do many people use views?  Yes and stored
procedures as well.  Any downsides to practicing this?  Yes...not every
table needs a view so the creation of a view on a table(s) should be based
entirely on the needs of the application not as a default approach.

HTH

Jerry
"ChrisR" <ChrisR@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:CDF541E0-1EAB-4129-A05D- DD47C0B72DCF@microso
ft.com...
>I was reading over some best practices yesterday and there is something Im
> not too clear on:
>
> For every table defined, at least one view is required. As many other
> views
> may be defined as are necessary. Application software refers to views
> instead
> of the tables themselves. This insulates the application from changes that
> are made to the underlying tables.
>
>
> I dont get it. What sort of table changes would this apply too. Do many
> people practice this? Any downsides to practicing this?
>
> --
> TIA,
>    ChrisR