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.
You can read more about Oracle stored procedures in the Oracle documentation. The following topics are covered:
Parameters: Our basic procedure accepts no parameters. You can declare input parameters to accept data, and output parameters to return data to the calling environment.
Variables: Again, our basic procedure contains no variable declarations, but you can declare any PL/SQL variable in a procedure, including characters, numbers, dates and Booleans.
Extracting data: You can use the SQL statement SELECT to extract data from an Oracle database and populate variables in your procedure.
Extracting lots of data: You can process batches of records in a procedure using cursors.
Transaction control: Manipulate data from within a procedure. Issue SQL statements INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE, and decide if you want to commit the changes, or if they should be rolled back.
Remember, if you don't feel like wading through documentation, visit the Developer Shed for fast answers. Let Mooh The Cow show you how!
Oracle 
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