Question about Procedures

Hi,
We are new to Oracle. We have been using MS SQL in the past. Some questions about stored procedures in Oracle:

1. Is considered more effecient in Oracle to have clients call procedures instead of making direct SQL calls?
2. I need to write a stored procedure that I can call from java to return multiple rows and columns e.g.:

I would like the client to execute the following or in SQLPLUS:

        "execute GetSum()"
where GetSum returns three columns :

	select Sum(amount) from table1;
	select Avg(price) from table1;
	select Max (price) from table1;

AND
GetPrice() where GetPrice returns a list of price:

        select price from table1;

How would I write these procedures?

Thanks,
Haresh Received on Wed Oct 01 1997 - 00:00:00 CDT