Syntax:
CREATE
    [OR REPLACE]
    [ALGORITHM = {UNDEFINED | MERGE | TEMPTABLE}]
    [DEFINER = { user | CURRENT_USER }]
    [SQL SECURITY { DEFINER | INVOKER }]
    VIEW view_name [(column_list)]
    AS select_statement
    [WITH [CASCADED | LOCAL] CHECK OPTION]

The CREATE VIEW statement creates a new view, or replaces an existing
view if the OR REPLACE clause is given. If the view does not exist,
CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW is the same as CREATE VIEW. If the view does
exist, CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW replaces it.

For information about restrictions on view use, see
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/view-restrictions.html.

The select_statement is a SELECT statement that provides the definition
of the view. (Selecting from the view selects, in effect, using the
SELECT statement.) The select_statement can select from base tables or
other views.

The view definition is "frozen" at creation time and is not affected by
subsequent changes to the definitions of the underlying tables. For
example, if a view is defined as SELECT * on a table, new columns added
to the table later do not become part of the view, and columns dropped
from the table will result in an error when selecting from the view.

The ALGORITHM clause affects how MySQL processes the view. The DEFINER
and SQL SECURITY clauses specify the security context to be used when
checking access privileges at view invocation time. The WITH CHECK
OPTION clause can be given to constrain inserts or updates to rows in
tables referenced by the view. These clauses are described later in
this section.

The CREATE VIEW statement requires the CREATE VIEW privilege for the
view, and some privilege for each column selected by the SELECT
statement. For columns used elsewhere in the SELECT statement, you must
have the SELECT privilege. If the OR REPLACE clause is present, you
must also have the DROP privilege for the view. CREATE VIEW might also
require the SUPER privilege, depending on the DEFINER value, as
described later in this section.

When a view is referenced, privilege checking occurs as described later
in this section.

A view belongs to a database. By default, a new view is created in the
default database. To create the view explicitly in a given database,
use db_name.view_name syntax to qualify the view name with the database
name:

CREATE VIEW test.v AS SELECT * FROM t;

Unqualified table or view names in the SELECT statement are also
interpreted with respect to the default database. A view can refer to
tables or views in other databases by qualifying the table or view name
with the appropriate database name.

Within a database, base tables and views share the same namespace, so a
base table and a view cannot have the same name.

Columns retrieved by the SELECT statement can be simple references to
table columns, or expressions that use functions, constant values,
operators, and so forth.

A view must have unique column names with no duplicates, just like a
base table. By default, the names of the columns retrieved by the
SELECT statement are used for the view column names. To define explicit
names for the view columns, specify the optional column_list clause as
a list of comma-separated identifiers. The number of names in
column_list must be the same as the number of columns retrieved by the
SELECT statement.

A view can be created from many kinds of SELECT statements. It can
refer to base tables or other views. It can use joins, UNION, and
subqueries. The SELECT need not even refer to any tables:

CREATE VIEW v_today (today) AS SELECT CURRENT_DATE;

The following example defines a view that selects two columns from
another table as well as an expression calculated from those columns:

mysql> CREATE TABLE t (qty INT, price INT);
mysql> INSERT INTO t VALUES(3, 50);
mysql> CREATE VIEW v AS SELECT qty, price, qty*price AS value FROM t;
mysql> SELECT * FROM v;
+------+-------+-------+
| qty  | price | value |
+------+-------+-------+
|    3 |    50 |   150 |
+------+-------+-------+

A view definition is subject to the following restrictions:

o The SELECT statement cannot contain a subquery in the FROM clause.

o The SELECT statement cannot refer to system variables or user-defined
  variables.

o Within a stored program, the SELECT statement cannot refer to program
  parameters or local variables.

o The SELECT statement cannot refer to prepared statement parameters.

o Any table or view referred to in the definition must exist. If, after
  the view has been created, a table or view that the definition refers
  to is dropped, use of the view results in an error. To check a view
  definition for problems of this kind, use the CHECK TABLE statement.

o The definition cannot refer to a TEMPORARY table, and you cannot
  create a TEMPORARY view.

o You cannot associate a trigger with a view.

o Aliases for column names in the SELECT statement are checked against
  the maximum column length of 64 characters (not the maximum alias
  length of 256 characters).

ORDER BY is permitted in a view definition, but it is ignored if you
select from a view using a statement that has its own ORDER BY or
filtering or grouping. When ORDER BY is combined with LIMIT or OFFSET
in a view definition, the ordering is always enforced before the query
result is used by the outer query, but it does not guarantee that the
same ordering is used in the end result. As a workaround, add an ORDER
BY clause to the outer query.

For other options or clauses in the definition, they are added to the
options or clauses of the statement that references the view, but the
effect is undefined. For example, if a view definition includes a LIMIT
clause, and you select from the view using a statement that has its own
LIMIT clause, it is undefined which limit applies. This same principle
applies to options such as ALL, DISTINCT, or SQL_SMALL_RESULT that
follow the SELECT keyword, and to clauses such as INTO, FOR UPDATE,
LOCK IN SHARE MODE, and PROCEDURE.

The results obtained from a view may be affected if you change the
query processing environment by changing system variables:

mysql> CREATE VIEW v (mycol) AS SELECT 'abc';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)

mysql> SET sql_mode = '';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT "mycol" FROM v;
+-------+
| mycol |
+-------+
| mycol |
+-------+
1 row in set (0.01 sec)

mysql> SET sql_mode = 'ANSI_QUOTES';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

mysql> SELECT "mycol" FROM v;
+-------+
| mycol |
+-------+
| abc   |
+-------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

The DEFINER and SQL SECURITY clauses determine which MySQL account to
use when checking access privileges for the view when a statement is
executed that references the view. The valid SQL SECURITY
characteristic values are DEFINER (the default) and INVOKER. These
indicate that the required privileges must be held by the user who
defined or invoked the view, respectively.

If a user value is given for the DEFINER clause, it should be a MySQL
account specified as 'user_name'@'host_name', CURRENT_USER, or
CURRENT_USER(). The default DEFINER value is the user who executes the
CREATE VIEW statement. This is the same as specifying DEFINER =
CURRENT_USER explicitly.

If the DEFINER clause is present, these rules determine the valid
DEFINER user values:

o If you do not have the SUPER privilege, the only valid user value is
  your own account, either specified literally or by using
  CURRENT_USER. You cannot set the definer to some other account.

o If you have the SUPER privilege, you can specify any syntactically
  valid account name. If the account does not exist, a warning is
  generated.

o Although it is possible to create a view with a nonexistent DEFINER
  account, an error occurs when the view is referenced if the SQL
  SECURITY value is DEFINER but the definer account does not exist.

For more information about view security, see
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/stored-programs-security.html.

Within a view definition, CURRENT_USER returns the view's DEFINER value
by default. For views defined with the SQL SECURITY INVOKER
characteristic, CURRENT_USER returns the account for the view's
invoker. For information about user auditing within views, see
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/account-activity-auditing.html.

Within a stored routine that is defined with the SQL SECURITY DEFINER
characteristic, CURRENT_USER returns the routine's DEFINER value. This
also affects a view defined within such a routine, if the view
definition contains a DEFINER value of CURRENT_USER.

MySQL checks view privileges like this:

o At view definition time, the view creator must have the privileges
  needed to use the top-level objects accessed by the view. For
  example, if the view definition refers to table columns, the creator
  must have some privilege for each column in the select list of the
  definition, and the SELECT privilege for each column used elsewhere
  in the definition. If the definition refers to a stored function,
  only the privileges needed to invoke the function can be checked. The
  privileges required at function invocation time can be checked only
  as it executes: For different invocations, different execution paths
  within the function might be taken.

o The user who references a view must have appropriate privileges to
  access it (SELECT to select from it, INSERT to insert into it, and so
  forth.)

o When a view has been referenced, privileges for objects accessed by
  the view are checked against the privileges held by the view DEFINER
  account or invoker, depending on whether the SQL SECURITY
  characteristic is DEFINER or INVOKER, respectively.

o If reference to a view causes execution of a stored function,
  privilege checking for statements executed within the function depend
  on whether the function SQL SECURITY characteristic is DEFINER or
  INVOKER. If the security characteristic is DEFINER, the function runs
  with the privileges of the DEFINER account. If the characteristic is
  INVOKER, the function runs with the privileges determined by the
  view's SQL SECURITY characteristic.

Example: A view might depend on a stored function, and that function
might invoke other stored routines. For example, the following view
invokes a stored function f():

CREATE VIEW v AS SELECT * FROM t WHERE t.id = f(t.name);

Suppose that f() contains a statement such as this:

IF name IS NULL then
  CALL p1();
ELSE
  CALL p2();
END IF;

The privileges required for executing statements within f() need to be
checked when f() executes. This might mean that privileges are needed
for p1() or p2(), depending on the execution path within f(). Those
privileges must be checked at runtime, and the user who must possess
the privileges is determined by the SQL SECURITY values of the view v
and the function f().

The DEFINER and SQL SECURITY clauses for views are extensions to
standard SQL. In standard SQL, views are handled using the rules for
SQL SECURITY DEFINER. The standard says that the definer of the view,
which is the same as the owner of the view's schema, gets applicable
privileges on the view (for example, SELECT) and may grant them. MySQL
has no concept of a schema "owner", so MySQL adds a clause to identify
the definer. The DEFINER clause is an extension where the intent is to
have what the standard has; that is, a permanent record of who defined
the view. This is why the default DEFINER value is the account of the
view creator.

The optional ALGORITHM clause is a MySQL extension to standard SQL. It
affects how MySQL processes the view. ALGORITHM takes three values:
MERGE, TEMPTABLE, or UNDEFINED. The default algorithm is UNDEFINED if
no ALGORITHM clause is present. For more information, see
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/view-algorithms.html, as well as
Optimizing Derived Tables
(http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/derived-table-optimization.html
).

Some views are updatable. That is, you can use them in statements such
as UPDATE, DELETE, or INSERT to update the contents of the underlying
table. For a view to be updatable, there must be a one-to-one
relationship between the rows in the view and the rows in the
underlying table. There are also certain other constructs that make a
view nonupdatable.

The WITH CHECK OPTION clause can be given for an updatable view to
prevent inserts or updates to rows except those for which the WHERE
clause in the select_statement is true.

In a WITH CHECK OPTION clause for an updatable view, the LOCAL and
CASCADED keywords determine the scope of check testing when the view is
defined in terms of another view. The LOCAL keyword restricts the CHECK
OPTION only to the view being defined. CASCADED causes the checks for
underlying views to be evaluated as well. When neither keyword is
given, the default is CASCADED.

For more information about updatable views and the WITH CHECK OPTION
clause, see
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/view-updatability.html, and
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/view-check-option.html.

URL: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/create-view.html

