Functions with global variables

Hello,

I am porting a stored procedure from Oracle. It uses a variable that
remembers its previous values from each invocation. (It uses a PRAGMA
REFERENCES clause for those who are familiar with Oracle.) In other
words, the variable in a particular stored procedure acts as a global
variable. So the each invocation of the stored procedure can see its
last value, instead of its initial default value.

Is there something similar in SQLServer?There are no global variables in SQL and local variables in a stored
procedure go out of scope when the SP returns. Maybe you can put the values
you want to persist into a table?

I can think of two likely reasons for wanting to do what you have described:
an auto-incrementing ID or a user-defined aggregate function. A
auto-incrementing ID is easy: use an IDENTITY column. User-defined aggregate
functions aren't possible in SQL2000 but there are solutions for some of the
non-standard aggregates that are commonly requested (Median, Product and
String Concatenation for example).

--
David Portas
SQL Server MVP
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