Chapter 7: Creating Advantage Extended Procedures (AEPs)

Overview

A stored procedure is a compiled subroutine that is installed on the server. While a stored procedure is called from your client applications at runtime, it is actually executed on the server.

Unlike most other relational database servers, which provide you with limited means for developing stored procedures, the stored procedures that ADS (Advantage Database Server) uses can be written in almost any development environment that can compile Windows DLLs (dynamic link libraries), Linux SO (shared object) libraries, in-process COM (component object model) servers, or .NET class libraries. These stored procedures are referred to collectively as Advantage Extended Procedures, or AEPs for short. In addition, since each of these libraries can contain more than one stored procedure function, they are referred to as AEP containers for convenience.

This chapter provides you with an in-depth look at stored procedures and AEPs. It begins with a detailed overview of the benefits that stored procedures can bring to your applications. This is followed by a thorough discussion of the structure of AEPs.

Later in this chapter, you will find step-by-step instructions on how to create AEPs using Delphi, C#, and VB.NET. This chapter concludes by describing how to install, test, debug, and deploy your newly created stored procedures.