Well, using a view is a bust. The web map and subsequently any web mapping app can't use it. To clarify though, the web map can see the view as a stand alone table but that doesn't buy me anything. The end user must be able to click points on the map and see the contents of the view as they relate to an given clicked on point. So I did a join in arcmap between the view and the point feature class. Works flawlessly in arcmap. I can edit a point, change the values for columnA and columnB and see columnC in the view update automatically based on the math formula. AGOL doesn't support joins in the mxd... You have to do a "field join" which literally appends the joined field onto your feature class, which defeats the purpose here since I'm using the view to create and autopopulate a calculated field.
So, it seems attempting to do anything other than using fields directly from a feature class is not supported and won't work. So, back to square one. I'll look at that attribute assistant next.
#runningoutofoptions