在SQL中更新视图是一种好习惯吗？

Question

I am learning SQL. It seems that PostgreSQL allows you to update a table through a 'view', if you have visibility of a few select columns of the table. On the other hand, SQLite simply does not support this (which makes more sense to me).

I wonder whether it is a good practice to update tables through views even when it is allowed?

Answer 1

This question may be a matter of opinion, but I would say that updating data through a view is generally not a good practice, although there are exceptions.

One of the main reasons to define views is to isolate users from changes in underlying data structures. Because not all views are updatable, that means that a change to the definition of a view (but not the result set) could invalidate code.

In some databases, it is possible to get around this by using triggers on views.

I should add that is "general" thinking. Another reason to have views is for access control and security. For instance, some users may not be able to see some columns in some tables; they have access to the view but not the underlying table. In this case, updates to views are a bit more reasonable.

All that said, I should point out that I'm not really a fan of having users update data directly at all. My preference is to do such updates through stored procedures, so there is much better control over the data model, auditing, and user-access.