Stored Routine Limitations

The following SQL statements are not permitted inside any stored routines (stored functions, stored procedures, events or triggers).

• ALTER VIEW; you can use CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW instead.
• LOAD DATA and LOAD TABLE.
• CHANGE MASTER TO
• INSERT DELAYED is permitted, but the statement is handled as a regular INSERT.
• LOCK TABLES and UNLOCK TABLES.
• References to local variables within prepared statements inside a stored routine (use user-defined variables instead).
• BEGIN (WORK) is treated as the beginning of a BEGIN END block, not a transaction, so START TRANSACTION needs to be used instead.
• The number of permitted recursive calls is limited to max_sp_recursion_depth. If this variable is 0 (default), recursivity is disabled. The limit does not apply to stored functions.
• Most statements that are not permitted in prepared statements are not permitted in stored programs. See Prepare Statement:Permitted statements for a list of statements that can be used. SIGNAL, RESIGNAL and GET DIAGNOSTICS are exceptions, and may be used in stored routines.

There are also further limitations specific to the kind of stored routine.

Note that, if a stored program calls another stored program, the latter will inherit the caller's limitations. So, for example, if a stored procedure is called by a stored function, that stored procedure will not be able to produce a result set, because stored functions can't do this.

See Also

• Stored Function Limitations
• Trigger Limitations
• Event Limitations