How to Leverage Views and Materialized Views in CockroachDB

In modern databases, efficient data access and maintainability are crucial — especially as schemas evolve and queries grow more complex. Views in CockroachDB help bridge this gap by allowing developers to create logical representations of data without altering the underlying tables. Regular views provide real-time access to data but compute results on every query, while materialized views store precomputed results, enabling faster queries but requiring data refresh to bring the precompiled results up to date. Materialized views are like compiled languages — they precompute and store query results for fast execution, but they represent a snapshot of the data at the time of materialization. They can serve as an effective mechanism for controlling data exposure by only exposing certain columns or hiding sensitive information. By using regular views or materialized views in CockroachDB, developers can simplify schema changes, improve application maintainability, and reduce the complexity of working with large datasets. The choice between regular and materialized views depends on performance needs and data freshness requirements, with regular views providing real-time access to data but requiring computation on every query, while materialized views offer faster query performance at the cost of requiring manual refreshes to reflect new data.