Stored Procedures

Stored procedures are routines that can execute a large group of precompiled QUERY statements through a single parent QUERY statement. When called, a stored procedure calls a single QUERY statement, which in turn may execute many more QUERY statements nested within it. Statements are commonly written in SQL, although C, C++, Java, and other programming languages may be used.

There are a number of advantages to using stored procedures:

• Speed: Stored procedures can potentially increase performance by reducing network traffic.
• Portability: Stored procedures are stored within the database itself and are executed on the server when called. When a stored procedure is modified, all clients have access to the new version.
• Security: Stored procedures can provide a layer between the end-user and the query programming code protecting statements from becoming corrupted.