A
subroutine stored in a
database and executed
by the
database management system. The subroutine may be
written in the same language in which the database is queried
and may be precompiled to improve performance.
Typically a stored procedure encapsulates some business
process. Performing this on the database server avoids the
network overhead of transferring input data to the client for
processing. This would be particularly significant if
processing lots of data and returning a small result set like
a total or maximum. Stored procedures also provide consistent
implementation of the business logic to clients written in
different languages and running in different environments.
Some financial systems allow databases access through stored
procedures alone, this restricts actions on the data to a
small number of auditable queries.
Sybase SQL Server (
Adaptive Server Enterprise) was the first
commercially successful RDBMS to support stored procedures.