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A virtual table acts as a single, read-only, non-physical table. It contains member tables, member fields, member keys and detailed relationship information. This information allows access to data in multiple related tables through the linking of one table’s keys to another table’s fields.
A virtual table accesses member tables by utilizing a related field from a primary table and using it as a key in a secondary table. In the following illustration, the Inventory virtual table has stored the related field, Shoe ID, from the main member table, Prices. The key for the secondary table, Shoes, is Shoe ID, which allows the data to be retrieved. At runtime, Dexterity identifies the related fields and completes the record in the virtual table by combining the records from the main and secondary tables.