Introduction To MySQL Stored Procedures
Introduction To MySQL Stored Procedures
The following SELECT statement returns all rows in the table customers from the sample database:
SELECT
customerName,
city,
state,
postalCode,
country
FROM
customers
ORDER BY customerName;
If you want to save this query on the database server for execution later, one way to do it is to use a
stored procedure.
The following CREATE PROCEDURE statement creates a new stored procedure that wraps the query
above:
DELIMITER $$
BEGIN
SELECT
customerName,
city,
state,
postalCode,
country
FROM
customers
ORDER BY customerName;
END$$
DELIMITER ;
By definition, a stored procedure is a segment of declarative SQL statements stored inside the MySQL
Server. In this example, we have just created a stored procedure with the name GetCustomers().
Once you save the stored procedure, you can invoke it by using the CALL statement:
CALL GetCustomers(6,HJK,3-3-2022,python,I);
The first time you invoke a stored procedure, MySQL looks up for the name in the database catalog,
compiles the stored procedure’s code, place it in a memory area known as a cache, and execute the
stored procedure.
If you invoke the same stored procedure in the same session again, MySQL just executes the stored
procedure from the cache without having to recompile it.
A stored procedure can have parameters so you can pass values to it and get the result back. For
example, you can have a stored procedure that returns customers by country and city. In this case, the
country and city are parameters of the stored procedure.
A stored procedure may contain control flow statements such as IF, CASE, and LOOP that allow you to
implement the code in the procedural way.
A stored procedure can call other stored procedures or stored functions, which allows you to modulize
your code.
Note that you will learn step by step how to create a new stored procedure in the next tutorial.
Stored procedures help reduce the network traffic between applications and MySQL Server. Because
instead of sending multiple lengthy SQL statements, applications have to send only the name and
parameters of stored procedures.
You can use the stored procedures to implement business logic that is reusable by multiple applications.
The stored procedures help reduce the efforts of duplicating the same logic in many applications and
make your database more consistent.
The database administrator can grant appropriate privileges to applications that only access specific
stored procedures without giving any privileges on the underlying tables.
Resource usages
If you use many stored procedures, the memory usage of every connection will increase substantially.
Besides, overusing a large number of logical operations in the stored procedures will increase the CPU
usage because the MySQL is not well-designed for logical operations.
Troubleshooting
It’s difficult to debug stored procedures. Unfortunately, MySQL does not provide any facilities to debug
stored procedures like other enterprise database products such as Oracle and SQL Server.
Maintenances
Developing and maintaining stored procedures often requires a specialized skill set that not all
application developers possess. This may lead to problems in both application development and
maintenance.