You can create or replace an external procedure using the same syntax except for the keywords CREATE and REPLACE.
- If you specify CREATE, the procedure must not exist.
- If you specify REPLACE, you can either create a new procedure or replace an existing procedure.
When you replace an existing external procedure, the replaced procedure does not retain the EXECUTE NOT PROTECTED attribute if one had previously been set using the ALTER PROCEDURE statement (see ALTER PROCEDURE (External Form)).
The advantage to using REPLACE is that you can avoid having to grant the EXECUTE privilege again to all users who already had that privilege on the procedure.