Views and Informix

I was wondering if someone might know how Informix implements VIEWS. In a discussion with our Informix Systems Engineer, he indicated that when a query is executed through a view, the engine first creates and populates a temporary table with a subquery constructed from the viewdefinition in sysviews. The outer query is then executed against the temporary table. He then went on to say that the temporary table can be reused if the view creation and population was not part of a transaction and the session that created and populated the view is still open. Problem is that we wanted to test this out. So we have a test database with no one on it. First we note the free space in the temp dbspace, create a view, note the free space again, then execute the query through the view, and then note the space a final time. Strangely enough the free space doesn't change. I am wondering if temp tables are indeed created, if they are small enough does the engine create them in memory? If anyone is familiar with the inner workings of Informix's views, I would love some insight. Thanks! Bryan Hughes Healtheon Corp. bryan@healtheon.com ============================================================= What if the HOKEY POKEY is what IT really is all about? =============================================================