At my wits end trying to create my very 1st MySQL stored procedure

I am trying to create a stored procedure in MySQL 5.5.8. using connector 8.0.13. Once this procedure is debugged, it will have to be embedded into a c#.net application, to be created on the fly every time the program is set up. For now, I am doing it manually. For someone like me, with MS SQL, Oracle, and DB2 background, this is challenging. I honestly read MySQL dev docs and googled to get a hang of MySQL SQL syntax. What I gather is that: * I have to change delimiter to something like // * I should use if not exists just in case * Parameters do not start with @, and they have to be parenthesized * I end the block with the temporary delimiter // and restore it to ; afterwards This is what I arrived at: delimiter // create procedure if not exists logging.logEntry( in hostName varchar(512) ,in entryDateTime datetime ,in entryText varchar(1024) ,out return_value int ) begin insert into logging.log (hostName, entryDateTime, entryText) select hostName, entryDateTime, entryText; set return_value = last_insert_id(); select return_value; end// delimiter ; When I run the above code in SquirrelSQL, the server throws the following error: > Error: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that > corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use > near 'if not exists loging.logEntry`( in hostName varchar(512) ,in > entryDat' at line 1 SQLState: 42000 ErrorCode: 1064 Here is what I tried: * Ran without DELIMITER * Removed if not exists * Removed backquotes around entity names * Inserted values() instead of select even though the standalone insert works I know that this is something totally obvious for a seasoned MySQL developer, but it escapes someone like me with a different background. Am I using any functionality that does not exist in 5.5.8 or are there bugs in my code?