I have been asked this question in the technical interview.
what is the difference between output of stored procedure and a function?
Can anybody please explain this?
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2Also, please search stackoverflow first before posting new questions, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1179758/function-vs-stored-procedure-in-sql-server – Bassam Mehanni Feb 11 '12 at 17:44
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A user defined function can return a strongly defined scalar or a tabular value. Basically, a function can return any data type you can assign to a T-SQL variable or a rowset.
A stored procedure does not strongly define its return type. It can have zero, one or multiple result sets which can be of scalar or rowset values.
Justin Dearing
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I don't know why I thought that. I removed that part of my answer. Also I should have ointed out that UDFs are "pure functions" with no side effects. – Justin Dearing Feb 11 '12 at 17:54
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Also a stored procedure doesn't have to have any result set at all. – Aaron Bertrand Feb 12 '12 at 19:24
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@AaronBertrand Thanks for clarifying. I updated y answer, but I already voted to close as duplicate. – Justin Dearing Feb 13 '12 at 01:15