Using Views - Do they imfluence performance

I'm Using v 7.3 on Aix 4.3. I've been asked to provice views that represent some rather complex queries; 8 tables with outer joins. Will I see any performance imprevement in the use of a View vs. straight execution of the query? I've tried to run both through dbaccess with EXPLAIN set on, and they return identical estimated cost values. Other than making life easier for the programmers (and more diffficult for me) are there any (positive or negative) benefits?

FProse wrote: > > I'm Using v 7.3 on Aix 4.3. I've been asked to provice views that represent some rather complex queries; 8 tables with > outer joins. Will I see any performance imprevement in the use of a View vs. straight execution of the query? I've > tried to run both through dbaccess with EXPLAIN set on, and they return identical estimated cost values. Other than > making life easier for the programmers (and more diffficult for me) are there any (positive or negative) benefits? Views do not have a major impact on query performance one way or the other normally. The exception is when you select a subset of the view columns and/or join the view to another table. There are situations where the optimizer cannot filter out the unneeded columns until the query is completed and this can slow things down versus writing the equivalent query against the underling tables. Art S. Kagel