Stored Procedures vs otherwise?

[Anti-Moronic]

I won't lie, MySql and DBMS's aren't exactly my strong point. I was reading some stuff about stored procedures but I'm trying to determine their place in my applications.

 

A lot of the queries I perform require custom params and such. Can anybody clarify where I might use them or an example of php applications which use them?

[Adam]

Complex systems where there's an extensive amount of queries and DB-related logic for a single process benefit largely from stored procedures. Not having to communicate back and forth between the server is a huge time/resource saver, but also creates a better separation between DB and application logic (in complex systems).

 

For example large companies where a single transaction requires a large amount of DB logic and can touch many tables, and even multiple databases, are the kind of thing they're best suited for. They can be useful in smaller applications of course, but it's probably not worth splitting the code/logic between the web server and the database server for something so small.

 

Not to mention, some systems/applications are based purely on the database server.