The Language of SQL, Second Edition

16. Stored Procedures and Parameters

Keywords Introduced

CREATE PROCEDURE  •  BEGIN  •  EXEC/CALL  •  ALTER PROCEDURE  •  DROP PROCEDURE

Up until this point, all of our data retrieval has been accomplished with a single SQL statement. Even the set logic seen in the previous chapter involved combining multiple SELECTs into a single statement. Now we’ll discuss a new scenario, in which multiple statements can be saved into a single object known as a stored procedure.

In broad terms, there are two general reasons for using stored procedures:

• To save multiple SQL statements in a single procedure

• To use parameters in conjunction with SQL statements

Stored procedures can, in fact, consist of a single SQL statement and contain no parameters. But ...