I didn't know about FMTONLY ON ignoring IF/THEN blocks.

Based on that and the fact that FMTONLY is used to get a list of column names and data types

Why not add this to your sproc

IF 1=0

BEGIN

SELECT

fieldname1inreturnset = cast(null as fieldtype),

...

RETURN

END

That way the quick FMTONLY on statement will just get a field list back.

My problems with FMTONLY have involved temp tables not getting created in that case... which is why for SSIS I always start my stored proc calls in OLEDB data sources as SET FMTONLY OFF;EXEC sp_executesql N'stored proc name'