Harald,

just two side notes:

1) Your CREATE VIEW statement doesn't run (it's erroneous).

2) If your'e on 2008, you may now use row constructors like this:

create view DIMSexes as

select * from (values(0,'Male','M')

,(1,'Female','F')

,(2,'Unknown','U')) as s(SKey, Description, V)

I remember a discussion like this, where Joe Celko suggested using views for simulating "small tables". There were some pros and cons inside this discussion and I think it'd be helpful, if you find it. If I only could remember the place where this discussion was going on... Does anybody have an idea?

SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition has Bitmapped Filters for optimizing star queries (see: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb522541.aspx). Not sure, if this works with views too.

I don't know if this helps very much but that's all I can say at the moment.

Regards,

Holger