Since the list's been slow, let me bounce this off everyone. Back in the "old" days I usually avoided views using the wildcard, like: select t1.*, t2.* from table1 t1, table2 t2.... because the view would break if you added or removed columns to the referenced tables. Now we don't have that problem anymore.
Just now I removed a column from a table and I had to modify the defintion of 6 views because they specifically mentioned that column. So, is there any efficiency gained by referencing specific column names in views rather than using the "t1.*" syntax? I've always wondered if you were, for example, querying a view that might list 10 specific columns between 2 tables, rather than using the wildcard which might result in a view with 50 columns. If there's no efficiency in a fewer number of columns, then I think I'm going to always use the "t1.*" so I don't have to worry about new/deleted columns. I'm not sure if this is a question that only RBTI would know the answer to. Thanks! Karen
