Table procedures and associated enhancements help improve the usability of database procedures.

A table procedure is a row-producing database procedure that can be invoked in the FROM clause of a SELECT statement. The procedure invocation can return rows, just as tables and views in the FROM clause can return rows.

A second enhancement allows columns of the result row of a row-producing procedure to be named, which makes the result rows of the table procedure accessible from within the query. This enhancement adds new syntax to the RESULT ROW clause of the CREATE PROCEDURE statement.

A third enhancement, the support of positional parameter notation, makes database procedure invocation more flexible. You can now code parameter values in a procedure invocation without their accompanying parameter names, if each value corresponds to its matching ordinal location in the list of declared parameters. This enhancement changes the syntax of the EXECUTE PROCEDURE statement.

Existing queries must be rewritten or new queries written to take advantage of these enhancements.

When migrating, to take advantage of the new features, existing row-producing procedures must be dropped and recreated with explicitly named result row columns, or the result row columns must be referenced using the Ingres default naming conventions.

Table procedures require the same authorizations that are required for executing database procedures.

New syntax is added to the following SQL statements:

For details, see these statement descriptions in the SQL Reference Guide.