I've always thought of a View as a stored query. Recently I needed to use Derived Tables in a project. That got me thinking about Views.
Isn't a View the same thing as a Derived Table except that it has been saved as a logical entity where a Derived Table is built on the fly?
Yes, for most intents and purposes they can be thought of as you described. They are the same idea.
In some RDBMS you can do more interesting things with a view. Indexing is the first that comes to mind. You can also grant access restrictions to views as they are proper database objects.
Take a look at "Derived Tables in SQL" for more information.