MySQL Stored Procedure Programming

Chapter 7. Creating and Maintaining Stored Programs

In this chapter, we'll explain how to create, maintain, and delete stored programs .

By definition, a stored program exists in the database (it wouldn't be stored otherwise, right?). So the fundamental process of creating a stored program involves submitting SQL statements to MySQL, just as creating a table involves submitting the CREATE TABLE statement. The basic process of creating and maintaining a stored program is very similar to that of creating any other kind of database object: you write some SQL to create the object and you (hopefully) save that SQL somewhere safe so that you can reuse it later. At some later time you may alter the object (or drop and recreate it), and you may want to find out information about it.

Creating Stored Programs

The CREATE PROCEDURE, CREATE FUNCTION, and CREATE TRIGGER statements allow you to create the various stored program objects: procedures, functions, and triggers.

You are no doubt familiar with the CREATE statements used to create tables, indexes, and other objects. There are some minor differences between the process of creating these objects and the process of creating stored programs. In addition to describing these differences, the following subsections describe the various environments in which you can issue the CREATE PROCEDURE, CREATE FUNCTION, and CREATE TRIGGER statements.

Before we dig into the syntax for creating and maintaining stored programs, let's look at the mechanics of editing ...