How can I pass tables to stored procedures? - sql

Question

I have a table of data like this, and one procedure is going to populate data in it like this,
DECLARE #ClaimChanges TABLE (
ChangeType NVARCHAR(10)
,contract_id int NOT NULL
,dispatch_id int NOT NULL
,dispatch_claim_id int NOT NULL
,item_no VARCHAR(100) NULL
,old_units VARCHAR(100) NULL
);
I would then like to pass that data to a different stored procedure which would be defined like this,
CREATE procedure [dbo].[ct_audit_oncost](
#table TABLE readonly,
#OutValue nvarchar(255) = null output
)
as
-- some stuff
go
I gather this is not possible as I am getting an error,
Incorrect syntax near the keyword 'TABLE'.

Answer 1

Table valued parameters are supported since 2008 version.
However, you can't just pass any table you want, first you need to define a user defined table type:
CREATE TYPE dbo.MyUDT as TABLE
(
ChangeType NVARCHAR(10)
,contract_id int NOT NULL
,dispatch_id int NOT NULL
,dispatch_claim_id int NOT NULL
,item_no VARCHAR(100) NULL
,old_units VARCHAR(100) NULL
)
Then you can use it in your stored procedure:
CREATE procedure [dbo].[ct_audit_oncost]
(
#table dbo.MyUDT readonly,
#OutValue nvarchar(255) = null output
)
as
-- some stuff
go
Please note you should also use it to declare the table to send to the database:
DECLARE #Out nvarchar(255)
DECLARE #ClaimChanges as dbo.MyUdt
INSERT INTO #ClaimChanges (ColumnsList) VALUES (ValuesList)
EXEC ct_audit_oncost #ClaimChanges, #Out output