Partially Materialized Views

We propose a new type of materialized view called a partially materialized view. A partially materialized view only materializes some of the rows, for example, the most frequently accessed rows, which reduces storage space and view maintenance effort. One or more control tables are associated with the view and define which rows are currently materialized. As a result, one can easily change which rows of the view are stored and maintained. We show how to extend view matching and maintenance algorithms to partially materialized views and outline several potential applications of the new view type. Experimental results in Microsoft SQL Server show that compared with fully materialized views, partially materialized views have lower storage requirements, better buffer pool efficiency, better query performance, and significantly lower maintenance costs.