Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 24 Hours, Second Edition

Stored Procedures and Functions

Stored procedures are groupings of related SQL statements—commonly referred to as functions and subprograms—that allow ease and flexibility for a programmer. This ease and flexibility is derived from the fact that a stored procedure is often easier to execute than a number of individual SQL statements. Stored procedures can be nested within other stored procedures. That is, a stored procedure can call another stored procedure, which can call another stored procedure, and so on.

Stored procedures allow for procedural programming. The basic SQL DDL, DML, and DQL statements (CREATE TABLE, INSERT, UPDATE, SELECT, and so on) allow you the opportunity to tell the database what needs to be done, but not how to do it. ...