This topic is a good way to start a flame war because most of us have
very strong feelings about the subject.

If you have a "standard" of a view that includes all of the columns,
then what happens when you add a column? If you change the view, then
you have the same effect as changing the table. If you suffix the view
with a version number, then your users always need to know what the
current version number is. Existing queries that need to use an added
column will need to be rewritten to use the new view to get to the data.

If your users have a great tendency to always do joins on a specific set
of tables, then it may be valuable to provide "default" views that
perform the joins.

Default views are also a great way to restrict user's access to the
entire underlying table. This could be necessary in an organization
where, for example, sales offices are only allowed to access their own
data or posssibly data for the sales region that includes the specific
office.

Phil Sherman