Default Values to Stored Procedure in Oracle

Default values are only used if the arguments are not specified. In your case you did specify the arguments - both were supplied, with a value of NULL. (Yes, in this case NULL is considered a real value :-). Try:

EXEC TEST()

Share and enjoy.

Addendum: The default values for procedure parameters are certainly buried in a system table somewhere (see the SYS.ALL_ARGUMENTS view), but getting the default value out of the view involves extracting text from a LONG field, and is probably going to prove to be more painful than it's worth. The easy way is to add some code to the procedure:

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE TEST(X IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT 'P',
                                 Y IN NUMBER DEFAULT 1)
AS
  varX VARCHAR2(32767) := NVL(X, 'P');
  varY NUMBER          := NVL(Y, 1);
BEGIN
  DBMS_OUTPUT.PUT_LINE('X=' || varX || ' -- ' || 'Y=' || varY);
END TEST;

Default-Values are only considered for parameters NOT given to the function.

So given a function

procedure foo( bar1 IN number DEFAULT 3,
     bar2 IN number DEFAULT 5,
     bar3 IN number DEFAULT 8 );

if you call this procedure with no arguments then it will behave as if called with

foo( bar1 => 3,
     bar2 => 5,
     bar3 => 8 );

but 'NULL' is still a parameter.

foo( 4,
     bar3 => NULL );

This will then act like

foo( bar1 => 4,
     bar2 => 5,
     bar3 => Null );

( oracle allows you to either give the parameter in order they are specified in the procedure, specified by name, or first in order and then by name )

one way to treat NULL the same as a default value would be to default the value to NULL

procedure foo( bar1 IN number DEFAULT NULL,
     bar2 IN number DEFAULT NULL,
     bar3 IN number DEFAULT NULL );

and using a variable with the desired value then

procedure foo( bar1 IN number DEFAULT NULL,
     bar2 IN number DEFAULT NULL,
     bar3 IN number DEFAULT NULL )
AS
     v_bar1    number := NVL( bar1, 3);
     v_bar2    number := NVL( bar2, 5);
     v_bar3    number := NVL( bar3, 8);