Data base functions are a type of stored procedure that returns a value to a calling program.

The function may take parameters or not, but will generally perform a computation or a data retrieval to determine a value and will then return that value to the calling program.

At its simplest, an Oracle function like SYSDATE returns to the calling program, the current date/time.

A moderately more complex function is the P2K_SMGLX function which takes two parameters, and executes a data base retrieval to determine the descriptive value of a lexicon.

A more complex function is P2K_SEGR which takes a number of parameters, some of which are optional, and will retrieve data and perform computations to determine a wage in a variety of rate basis values.

See the list of Callable Functions that can be used by interfaces and discoverer.