What are views? Explain how views are different from tables?

A view in SQL terminology is a one table in which is derived from other tables. These other tables could be base tables or previously described views. A view does not necessarily exist in physical form; it is considered a virtual table, in contrast to base tables, whose tuples are infact stored in the database. This limits the possible update operations in which can be applied to views, but it does not provide any limitations on querying a view. A view represents a variant perspective of a base relation(s). The definition of a view in a form view statement is stored in the system catalog. Any attribute in the view could be updated as long as the attribute is simple and not derived from a computation including two or more base relation attribute. View that includes a join may or may not be updatable. Such views are not updatable if they do not include the primary keys of the base relations.