A private procedure

 A private procedure in PL/SQL is a procedure that is declared inside a package body but not exposed in the package specification. It can only be called within the package and not from outside.

Example:

CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE my_package AS  

   PROCEDURE public_proc; -- Only public procedure is declared here

END my_package;

/

CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE BODY my_package AS  

   -- Private procedure (not declared in package spec)

   PROCEDURE private_proc IS  

   BEGIN  

       DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('This is a private procedure');  

   END private_proc;  

   -- Public procedure that can call the private one

   PROCEDURE public_proc IS  

   BEGIN  

       private_proc; -- Private procedure is called within the package  

   END public_proc;  

END my_package;

/

How to call a private procedure?

• Directly calling private_proc from outside will fail.

• You must call the public procedure (public_proc), which internally calls the private procedure:

EXEC my_package.public_proc;