diff between SPROC,UFD,PL/SQL

[Amirtharaj Chinnaraj]

HI GUYS

what is the diffence between stored procedure ,user defined function

and PL/SQL

LOOING FOR YOUR REPLIES
[ March 24, 2008: Message edited by: Amirtharaj Chinnaraj ]

[Agador Paloi]

Pl / SQl is a programming script - language that is used by the Oracle database.

A user defined function is similiar to a java method in that it can have zero or more parameters input and must return a value. They can be used in sql statements once defined. You useally see them written in Pl/sql but can be written in java.

A stored procedure can have zero or more parameters that are input or output from the procedure. The stored procedure resides on the DB server to allow faster data access. Useally written in PL/SQl .

This is a simplistic summary but hopefully give you an idea.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Amirtharaj,
Please watch the caps. It's often perceived as shouting; certainly not your intent.

PL/SQL is a language while stored procedures and user defined functions are concepts. For that later two, the difference is how they are called. A function is called just like the built in functions (sum(), count(), etc) - as a function within a query. A procedure is called on it's own.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Agador: You beat me by a few seconds! It's nice that the original poster gets two wordings of the answer though.

[Amirtharaj Chinnaraj]

thank you guys