Database : Different Types of SQL Server Stored Procedures

A stored procedure is a precompiled set of one or more SQL statements that is stored on Sql Server. Benifit of Stored Procedures is that they are executed on the server side and perform a set of actions, before returning the results to the client side. This allows a set of actions to be executed with minimum time and also reduce the network traffic. Hence stored procedure improve performance to execute sql statements. For more about stored procedure refer the article CRUD Operations using Stored Procedures.

Stored procedure can accepts input and output parameters. Stored procedure can returns multiple values using output parameters. Using stored procedure, we can Select,Insert,Update,Delete data in database.

Types of Stored Procedure

1. System Defined Stored Procedure

   These stored procedure are already defined in Sql Server. These are physically stored in hidden Sql Server Resource Database and logically appear in the sys schema of each user defined and system defined database. These procedure starts with the sp_ prefix. Hence we don't use this prefix when naming user-defined procedures. Here is a list of some useful system defined procedure.
   System Defined Stored Pocedure

   System Procedure

   Description

   sp_rename

   It is used to rename an database object like stored procedure,views,table etc.

   sp_changeowner

   It is used to change the owner of an database object.

   sp_help

   It provides details on any database object.

   sp_helpdb

   It provide the details of the databases defined in the Sql Server.

   sp_helptext

   It provides the text of a stored procedure reside in Sql Server

   sp_depends

   It provide the details of all database objects that depends on the specific database object.

2. Extended Procedure

   Extended procedures provide an interface to external programs for various maintenance activities. These extended procedures starts with the xp_ prefix and stored in Master database. Basically these are used to call programs that reside on the server automatically from a stored procedure or a trigger run by the server.
   Example Below statements are used to log an event in the NT event log of the server without raising any error on the client application.

   
    declare @logmsg varchar(100)
   set @logmsg = suser_sname() + ': Tried to access the dotnet system.'
   exec xp_logevent 50005, @logmsg
   print @logmsg 
   
   

   Example The below procedure will display details about the BUILTIN\Administrators Windows group.

   
    EXEC xp_logininfo 'BUILTIN\Administrators'
   
   

3. User Defined Stored Procedure

   These procedures are created by user for own actions. These can be created in all system databases except the Resource database or in a user-defined database.

4. CLR Stored Procedure

   CLR stored procedure are special type of procedure that are based on the CLR (Common Language Runtime) in .net framework. CLR integration of procedure was introduced with SQL Server 2008 and allow for procedure to be coded in one of .NET languages like C#, Visual Basic and F#. I will discuss CLR stored procedure later.

Note

1. We can nest stored procedures and managed code references in Sql Server up to 32 levels only. This is also applicable for function, trigger and view.
2. The current nesting level of a stored procedures execution is stored in the @@NESTLEVEL function.
3. In Sql Server stored procedure nesting limit is up to 32 levels, but there is no limit on the number of stored procedures that can be invoked with in a stored procedure