What is the difference between CALL and EXEC in T-SQL?

Question

Consider:

CREATE PROCEDURE LowerCityDiscounts @city VARCHAR(45), @decrease DECIMAL(10,2) AS
BEGIN
    BEGIN TRANSACTION;
    UPDATE Customers SET discnt = discnt         


        

Answer 1

The T-SQL language does not recognise ODBC escape sequences; EXEC is the only command available for calling a stored procedure. ODBC escape sequences are interpreted by client-side libraries (e.g. ODBC, OLE DB, ADO, ADO.NET) and translated to real T-SQL syntax on the fly before execution.

The end result is, you can call your top-level stored procedure from the client using CALL if you want to, but if that procedure calls others, it must use EXEC.

The same principle applies for the date/time literal escape sequences.