====== Components of Stored Procedures ======

Stored procedures may begin with the Compile statement which serves to

* identify the stored procedure as a function or subroutine;

* identify the stored procedure’s name;

* declare the arguments passed to the stored procedure, providing the argument names and data types.

An example of a Compile statement is:

<code>
Compile Function COUNT_INVOICES(Integer inv_count)
</code>

Argument names have the same rules as stored procedure names. You may pass in as many as 256 arguments. Rules for stored procedure and argument names are as follows:

* begin with an alpha character;

* do not use spaces or periods;

* limit names to 50 characters or less.