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.
An Oracle stored procedure is a program stored in an Oracle database.
Procedures are written in the PL/SQL programming language. You can use the Notepad text editor to write a procedure. Save each procedure with a .sql file name extension.
Log on to an Oracle database with Oracle's SQL*Plus tool. It submits SQL and PL/SQL statements to the Oracle database.
The SQL statement CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE creates, compiles and saves a procedure on an Oracle database, regardless of whether the procedure contained compilation errors or not.
Run a procedure stored on an Oracle database from the SQL*Plus tool. Use the EXECUTE statement, or an anonymous PL/SQL block to call your procedure.
The clause OR REPLACE from the SQL statement CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE overwrites an existing stored procedure on the Oracle database.
View a procedure's compilation errors with the SQL*Plus command SHOW ERRORS.
The SQL statement DROP PROCEDURE permanently removes a procedure from an Oracle database.
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