Naming columns in the View

How do you name columns returned from your created view? Generally, you do not need to explicitly name them as the names of view-columns are derived from base-tables. But, if there is any ambiguity in the name for a column or calculated column, then it must be named explicitly.

What are the ways of naming columns?

There are two ways of naming columns in the view. One way is, mentioning names along with CREATE VIEW statement. This requires names for all columns, you cannot just name set of columns in the view. Here is an example of it;

Other way is, adding aliases to columns. Most of us prefer this way because we do not need to name all columns explicitly. In most cases, we need to name columns that has ambiguity in the name or it is a calculated column. Remember if above technique is used for naming columns, aliases added will be overwritten.

Creating Horizontal Views and Vertical Views

Everyone has either used or created views for getting or creating a dynamic result using one or multiple tables. And everyone knows the usage of views and purpose of creating them. But many do not how they have been categorized; such as Horizontal and Vertical. Here is a simple explanation on them.

Horizontal Views

If you think about the standard definition of a view, it is a virtual relation (table) that is result of one or more relational operations on one or more relations (tables). In simple terms, is a logical table defined with a SELECT statement based on one or more tables. Now, what is a Horizontal View? It is a view that limits the number of records to be produced. We create Horizontal Views by adding WHERE clause.

USE AdventureWorks2014;
GO

CREATE VIEW dbo.Sales_2012
AS
SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader
WHERE YEAR(OrderDate) = 2012;
GO

Vertical Views

This view results set of selected columns from one or more tables. We implement this by selecting required columns, optionally adding the WHERE clause.

USE AdventureWorks2014;
GO

CREATE VIEW dbo.Sales_2012_Summary
AS
SELECT SalesOrderNumber, OrderDate, SubTotal 
FROM Sales.SalesOrderHeader
WHERE YEAR(OrderDate) = 2012;
GO

In addition to that, there is another type called Grouped and joined views that is actually either a Horizontal View or Vertical View with aggregations and multiple joins, hence I do not think that it has to be taken as a major type.