From the course: Database Foundations: Database Management

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Add programming elements to the database

Add programming elements to the database

From the course: Database Foundations: Database Management

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Add programming elements to the database

- [Instructor] Functions and stored procedures are two additional types of database objects that are supported across the majority of RDBMS platforms. They'll be useful when you want to integrate more traditional programming routines into your databases and will greatly expand the capabilities of these systems that you design. Functions are the simpler of the two objects. They typically take some input values that are passed in by a user, and then the function processes that value and returns a new value. For instance, a function could be written that processes date values. The user sends in a calendar date to the function, and the function returns the corresponding day of the week. Now, if you've ever used a spreadsheet app like Excel, then you've almost certainly used functions before. Like Excel, relational database management systems come with dozens of built-in functions that can handle common tasks, and if those aren't enough, you can create and save your own custom functions…

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