The invention relates to a soft measurement method of the outflow water quality of sewage treatment, comprising the following steps: selecting the TOC, the DO, the ORP and the pH value of inflow water as inputs and quantities, i.e. BOD or COD, to be subject to soft measurement as outputs, and procedurally storing the inputs and the outputs into an embedded type metering instrument by adopting a structural modeling of a PNN process neural network and on the basis of an improved algorithm of the PNN process neural network; firstly carrying out off-line network training, inputting multiple groups of acquired input quantity values, and regulating the network training by a self-adaption network of the metering instrument processing system till the precision of the network training achieves a preset value; carrying out on-line measurement and real-time sampling on a sewage treatment site, filtering obtained data and then inputting the obtained data to an instrument, and fast computing an obtained BOD or COD value by a computing system; and outputting display or printing. An on-line intelligent detecting instrument comprises a group of sensors, an analog-digital converter, a CPU central processor, input equipment and output equipment, wherein the group of sensors collects the TOC, the DO, the ORP and the pH value, and a soft measurement procedure module organized on the basis of the structure and the improved algorithm of the PNN process neural network is embedded into the CPU central processor.