How can I find the underlying column and table name for an Oracle view?

Question

This sounds like it should be simple to do but not so! There is no Oracle (meta-data) view that I can find that gives the underlying column and table name for an Oracle view col

Answer 1

Since the requester is looking for any instance of his table, and not with respect to a specific view, I would recommend:

SELECT *
  FROM DBA_DEPENDENCIES
 WHERE TYPE = 'VIEW'
   AND REFERENCED_TYPE = 'TABLE'
   AND REFERENCED_NAME = '<TABLE_NAME>'