This questions has nothing to do with VB.NET or VS. It is a database question and therefore belongs in a database-specific forum. As such, it has been moved to Database General
A materialised view is like a regular view in that it provides a potentially filtered, sorted and joined view of data stored in one or more tables. The difference is that, while regular view doesn't actually contain any data itself and is just a way to look at data stored in tables, a materialised view actually stores the result set of the query it's based on and updates it periodically. Materialised views are quicker to query but may not always contain the latest data.