layout: global title: CREATE VIEW displayTitle: CREATE VIEW license: | Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

 http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

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Description

Views are based on the result-set of an SQL query. CREATE VIEW constructs a virtual table that has no physical data therefore other operations like ALTER VIEW and DROP VIEW only change metadata.

Syntax

CREATE [ OR REPLACE ] [ [ GLOBAL ] TEMPORARY ] VIEW [ IF NOT EXISTS ] view_identifier
    create_view_clauses AS query

Parameters

  • OR REPLACE

    If a view of same name already exists, it will be replaced.

  • [ GLOBAL ] TEMPORARY

    TEMPORARY views are session-scoped and will be dropped when session ends because it skips persisting the definition in the underlying metastore, if any. GLOBAL TEMPORARY views are tied to a system preserved temporary database global_temp.

  • IF NOT EXISTS

    Creates a view if it does not exist.

  • view_identifier

    Specifies a view name, which may be optionally qualified with a database name.

    Syntax: [ database_name. ] view_name

  • create_view_clauses

    These clauses are optional and order insensitive. It can be of following formats.

    • [ ( column_name [ COMMENT column_comment ], ... ) ] to specify column-level comments.
    • [ COMMENT view_comment ] to specify view-level comments.
    • [ TBLPROPERTIES ( property_name = property_value [ , ... ] ) ] to add metadata key-value pairs.

  • query A SELECT statement that constructs the view from base tables or other views.

Examples

-- Create or replace view for `experienced_employee` with comments.
CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW experienced_employee
    (ID COMMENT 'Unique identification number', Name) 
    COMMENT 'View for experienced employees'
    AS SELECT id, name FROM all_employee
        WHERE working_years > 5;

-- Create a global temporary view `subscribed_movies` if it does not exist.
CREATE GLOBAL TEMPORARY VIEW IF NOT EXISTS subscribed_movies 
    AS SELECT mo.member_id, mb.full_name, mo.movie_title
        FROM movies AS mo INNER JOIN members AS mb 
        ON mo.member_id = mb.id;

Related Statements