OO Base: created a View but it shows no data

Normally, an issue like this is not specific to the OpenOfficePortable version, so it is better to ask Base/HSQLDB experts in generic OpenOffice forums.

But to answer your question, a View will not contain data unless the query itself is sound and will produce a result set. In other words, if you you can build a query based on the data in your tables that produces a query table (result set), then the same query should work as a View (stored query). Is that not the case with your query/View?

The use of Views or Queries, is generally a question of storage and/or data security. But with Base, the query can be stored in the Base front-end file as a "Query" OR in the back-end (database-engine specific) files as a "View." With the default Base-HSQLDB-embedded configuration, both queries and views are stored in the same .odb (zip container) file (albeit within their respective compressed files). So if you're using Base exclusively to access the database, then query storage location is practically mute and you can just build a Query if you suspect problems with Views. So that leaves security: unless you're using a client-server configuration with user role-based security, Views have little or no advantage over Queries. However, with user/group roles you can restrict access to various Views on a user-by-user (or group-by-group) basis. For that matter, you can even build a database within a database using Schema.