Daniel, Not sure what you are asking, but this might help you: Virtual fields are otherwise known as 'computed columns' in database terms - if that is what you are familiar with. e.g. Sum, Count, Min, Max, etc as these values are derived from underlying table data in a database.
A database view is something entirely different - think of it as a virtual table or a stored query than can expose either a subset of table columns or a query that joins multiple tables and shows just the columns you want. Views are very commonly used in legacy type applications (for security and performance reasons - e.g. hide the employee salary info by creating a view that excludes that data element). In the world of web development (Web2py, Django, Rails etc) database access is managed primarily by ORM's. For the most part these are not very 'View' friendly - you have to jump through a few hoops to use a view and there are some also potential maintenance issues. (FWIW views are very useful for simplifying complex queries and it's a pity that they are not well supported in most web environments). Hope this helps, BrendanC
