Procedures and triggers store procedural SQL statements in a database for use by all applications. They can include control statements that allow repetition (LOOP statement) and conditional execution (IF statement and CASE statement) of SQL statements. Batches are sets of SQL statements submitted to the database server as a group. Many features available in procedures and triggers, such as control statements, are also available in batches.

Procedures are invoked with a CALL statement, and use parameters to accept values and return values to the calling environment. SELECT statements can also operate on procedure result sets by including the procedure name in the FROM clause.

Procedures can return result sets to the caller, call other procedures, or fire triggers. For example, a user-defined function is a type of stored procedure that returns a single value to the calling environment. User-defined functions do not modify parameters passed to them, but rather, they broaden the scope of functions available to queries and other SQL statements.

Triggers are associated with specific database tables. They fire automatically whenever someone inserts, updates or deletes rows of the associated table. Triggers can call procedures and fire other triggers, but they have no parameters and cannot be invoked by a CALL statement.

SQL Anywhere debugger

You can debug stored procedures and triggers using the SQL Anywhere debugger. See Debugging procedures, functions, triggers, and events.

You can profile stored procedures to analyze performance characteristics in Sybase Central. See Procedure profiling using system procedures.