A way of portraying information from a database. This can be done by arranging the data items in a specific order, by highlighting certain items, or by showing only certain items. For any database, there are a number of possible views that may be specified. Often thought of as a virtual table, the view doesn’t actually store information itself; the view just pulls information out of one or more existing tables. Although impermanent, a view may be accessed repeatedly by storing its criteria in a query.