Introduction to SQL: Mastering the Relational Database Language, Fourth Edition/20th Anniversary Edition

Part V. Procedural Database Objects

In Section 1.4, in Chapter 1, “Introduction to SQL,” we stated that for a long time SQL was a purely declarative language, but this changed in 1986–1987 when Sybase came onto the market. With this product, the first commercial implementation of the stored procedure became a fact, and that changed the character of SQL. A stored procedure can informally be described as a piece of code that can be activated; this piece of code consists of well-known SQL statements, such as INSERT and SELECT, but also procedural statements, such as IF-THEN-ELSE. Because stored procedures offered many practical advantages, other vendors started to implement them, too. This meant the end of the pure declarative character of SQL. Since ...