14.3. Long Parameter Lists in Procedures and Functions

A parameter is the formal name for a value passed to a procedure; an argument is the actual value that a parameter takes. If you check with the vendor of your SQL database product, you will find that functions written in the vendor’s proprietary 4GL can handle a huge number of parameters. The maximum number of arguments for stored procedures in Sybase is 2,048, MS SQL Server can have 2,100 arguments, and in DB2 the maximum number of arguments is 32,767 (for DARI-style procedures only; for GENERAL style, the limit is 90).

If you are an old C programmer, you might remember when the ANSI Standard C changed the way that an array was passed on the stack from a pointer to the actual array elements. ...

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