Stored procedures are pre-programmed code that lives inside the database. They generally encompass searches that are more complex than the simple select ... from ... where ... SQL statements.

Stored procedures in some database products cannot yield a record structure the same as a select query would. This is because they are not associated with any particular table and so they return the results as a resultSet rather than a table record. You may need to do additional work to turn the resultSet into the objects you need.

Warnings:

• Every middle-ware application server supports a completely different way of running stored procedures. At least it seems like that sometimes when you are using several different products. Fundamentally they all do the same thing but databases provide different mechanical implementations and so there are many different ways in which to develop code to exploit them.