So what's this business with Oracle allowing programmers to put programs in databases? That's right. They're called Oracle stored procedures, and they're quite useful. Mooh the Cow walks you through writing, creating, debugging, and deleting a procedure.
Run your procedure from the SQL*Plus command prompt with the EXECUTE command like this:
SQL> EXECUTE skeleton;
SQL*Plus assures you the procedure executed successfully:
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
The EXECUTE statement is easy and fast to type.
You can also run your procedure from within an unnamed PL/SQL block. At the SQL*Plus command prompt, it looks like this:
SQL> BEGIN 2 SKELETON; 3 END; 4 /
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
By calling your procedure from within an unnamed PL/SQL block, you can even call your procedure twice, like this:
SQL> BEGIN 2 SKELETON; 3 SKELETON; 4 END; 5 /
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed.
SQL*Plus refers to the unnamed PL/SQL block when it says "PL/SQL procedure successfully completed." So even though we called the skeleton procedure twice, we only get one message back. So much for going the extra mile!
Now that we've run our procedure, what do we need to do if we want to change it?
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