The result of manipulations of tables is always a view. In Datascope, the view is not a copy of the contents of base tables, but rather a collection of references to records in base tables. The result of subsets, sorts, and joins are simple views: every record in the view consists of a fixed set of database pointers identifying a particular record in a base table. Changing a field in a view actually changes the corresponding field in some base table.
More complex views -- grouped views, for example -- are not simply a collection of references to explicit records in base tables. Instead, there are some fields -- the fields on which the grouped view was formed -- which are copies of fields in base tables, and range references, usually to a range of records in a view (since a table must usually be sorted before applying the group operation).