Queries and Views
A query is a specific request for the retrieval, creation, modification, or deletion of data in a database. A database accepts queries that are written in SQL, a language that is powerful but challenging. To capitalize on the power of SQL without enduring the challenge of writing it, you can use the Visual Database Tools. With the tools, you can create SQL queries without directly writing SQL.
SQL is also used to create views, which are specific subsets of database data. Because views and retrieval queries are defined with the same statement (the SQL SELECT statement), they are necessarily similar. But there are important distinctions between queries and views. For more information see Comparison of Queries and Views.
The SQL SELECT statement is the foundation of views and retrieval queries, but there are other kinds of queries based on other SQL statements. For more information about the types of queries, see Supported Query Types.