nstead of computing a query from scratch, a system can use results that have already been computed, stored, and kept in sync with database updates. The ability of materialized views to speed up queries benefits most database applications, ranging from traditional querying and reporting to web database caching, online analytical processing, and data mining. By reducing dependency on the availability of base data, materialized views have also laid much of the foundation for information integration and data warehousing systems. The database tradition of declarative querying distinguishes materialized views from generic applications of precomputation and caching in other contexts, and makes materialized views especially interesting, powerful, and challenging at the same time. This monograph provides an accessible introduction and reference to materialized views, explains its core ideas, highlights its recent developments, and points out its sometimes subtle connections to other research topics in databases. Dr. Rada Chirkova is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the North Carolina State University, specializing in the research fields of algorithms and theories of computation, information and knowledge management, cybersecurity, analytics, and health care information technology. Dr. Chirkova received her doctorate from Stamford University in 2002, and came to North Carolina State University in the following year. This is Dr. Chirkova’s first book, though she has written numerous articles on a wide variety of topics in computer science. She has received numerous accolades during her time here at NC State, including four IBM Faculty Awards in 2007, 2010, 2011, and 2012, the National Science Foundation Faculty Early CAREER Award in 2005, and most recently was appointed a senior member of the Association for Computing Machinery in 2012. Dr. Chirkova has also been instrumental in the development and execution of the Taming the Data speaker series, an ongoing series of talks by invited guests on various topics relating to computer science.