Beginning Microsoft SQL Server 2008 ... - S3 Tech Training

Chapter 12: Stored Procedures
Now, just for grins, let’s alter that sproc to verify that we can send whatever integer value we want back
as the return value:
USE AdventureWorks2008;
GO
ALTER PROC spTestReturns
AS
DECLARE @MyMessage varchar(50);
DECLARE @MyOtherMessage varchar(50);
SELECT @MyMessage = ‘Hi, it’’s that line before the RETURN’;
PRINT @MyMessage
RETURN 100;
SELECT @MyOtherMessage = ‘Sorry, but we won’’t get this far’;
PRINT @MyOtherMessage;
RETURN;
Now rerun your test script and you’ll get the same result save for that change in return value:
Hi, it’s that line before the RETURN
-----------
100
(1 row(s) affected)
More On Dealing with Er rors
378
Sure. We don’t need this section. I mean, our code never has errors, and we never run into problems,
right? OK, well, now that we’ve had our moment of fantasy for today, let’s get down to reality. Things
go wrong — it’s just the way that life works in the wonderful world of software engineering. Fortunately,
we can do something about it. Unfortunately, you’re probably not going to be happy with the
tools you have. Fortunately again, there are ways to make the most out of what you have, and ways to
hide many of the inadequacies of error handling in the SQL world.
OK, so we got a taste of error handling at the end of the previous chapter when we looked at TRY/CATCH
blocks. Indeed, those are the way to perform traditional error handling when you only need to support
SQL Server 2005 and newer. There is, however, a lot more to think about in SQL Server errors and error
handling than just TRY/CATCH. So let’s take a bit deeper look at things. . . .
Three common error types can happen in SQL Server:
❑ Errors that create runtime errors and stop your code from proceeding further.
❑ Errors that SQL Server knows about, but that don’t create runtime errors such that your code
stops running (these can also be referred to as inline errors).
❑ Errors that are more logical in nature and to which SQL Server is essentially oblivious.