Microsoft® SQL Server 2008 R2 Unleashed

Executing Stored Procedures

To execute a stored procedure, you simply invoke it by using its name (the same way you probably have already executed system stored procedures, such as sp_help). If the execution of the stored procedure isn’t the first statement in a batch, you need to precede the procedure name with the EXEC keyword. Following is the basic syntax for executing stored procedures:

Note

The reason you need the EXEC keyword when invoking a stored procedure in a batch or other stored procedure is quite simple. SQL Server parses the commands sent to it in a batch by searching for keywords. Stored procedure names aren’t keywords. If SQL ...