Defining an Interface View¶

Interface views are a special type of derived views that consist only of a definition of fields and a reference to another view. You can use them to do a top-down design where you first define the fields of the interface and later, you set the “implementation view” of the interface.

When the Server executes a query that involves the interface, the query is delegated to the implementation view.

Interface views are created with the statement CREATE INTERFACE VIEW.

CREATE [ OR REPLACE ] INTERFACE VIEW <name:identifier>
    ( <field name:identifier> : <field type>
      [ ,<field name:identifier> : <field type> ]* )
    [ SET IMPLEMENTATION <view identifier>
        [ ( <field name:identifier> = <expression:value>
            [, <field name:identifier> = <expression:value> ]* )
        ]
    ]
    [ FOLDER = <literal> ]
    [ DESCRIPTION = <literal> ]

<view identifier> ::= (see Basic primitives for specifying VQL statements)

For example,

CREATE INTERFACE VIEW i_incidences (
    summary:text,
    ttime:date,
    taxid:text,
    inc_type:long,
)
SET IMPLEMENTATION incidences
FOLDER = '/Interface views';

This statement creates an interface view with the fields summary, ttime, taxid and inc_type and sets incidences as the implementation view (SET IMPLEMENTATION clause). With this syntax, the interface view (i_incidents) and the implementation view (incidents) must have the same number of fields and with the same name.

To create an interface view whose implementation view does not match the definition of the interface, you can define an expression for each field of the interface. For example,

CREATE OR REPLACE INTERFACE VIEW i_incidents_test_delete (
    summary:text,
    ttime:date,
    taxid:text
    )
    SET IMPLEMENTATION incidents(
        summary = coalesce(summary, '<EMPTY>'),
        ttime = ttime,
        taxid = taxid
);

In this example, the summary field of the interface is mapped to an expression instead of just a field. Also, the view incidents could have more fields than summary, ttime and taxid and they are simply not taken into account in the definition of the interface.

After defining an interface you can modify it to change its definition and its implementation view. To do this, use the ALTER INTERFACE VIEW statement.

ALTER INTERFACE VIEW <name:identifier>
    [ ( <field name:identifier> : <field type>
        [, <field name:identifier> : <field type> ]* ) ]
    [ SET IMPLEMENTATION <view identifier>
        [ ( <field name:identifier> = <expression:value>
            [, <field name:identifier> = <expression:value> ]* )
        ]
    ]

<view identifier> ::= (see Basic primitives for specifying VQL statements)

For example,

ALTER INTERFACE VIEW i_incidences (
      summary:text
    , ttime:date
    , taxid:text
)
SET IMPLEMENTATION another_view;

This statement removes the field inc_type from the definition of the interface and changes the implementation view of the interface.

To delete an interface view use the statement DROP INTERFACE VIEW (see Syntax of the DROP statement).