# Creating materialized views
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You can create a materialized view based on one or more of the following:
+ Amazon Redshift tables
+ External tables that you can create by using [Amazon Redshift Spectrum](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift/latest/dg/c-using-spectrum.html) or a [federated query](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/redshift/latest/dg/federated-overview.html)
+ Other materialized views

When you create a materialized view, Amazon Redshift runs the user-specified SQL statement to gather the data from the base table or tables. Then, Amazon Redshift stores the result set.

The following illustration provides an overview of a materialized view called `mv_total_orders`. This view is defined by a SQL query that uses two base tables: customer and order.

![\[SQL query with two base tables\]](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/prescriptive-guidance/latest/materialized-views-redshift/images/create_materialized_view.png)