This is a nice post - I was not aware that you could use the 'set rowcount' command to limit the number of rows deleted (or inserted or updated for that matter). In digging up a little more detail though, I came across the following note in SQL 2008 BOL. If you're designing code to work in future versions of SQL, you may want to avoid the 'set rowcount' command:

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Using SET ROWCOUNT will not affect DELETE, INSERT, and UPDATE statements in the next release of SQL Server. Do not use SET ROWCOUNT with DELETE, INSERT, and UPDATE statements in new development work, and plan to modify applications that currently use it. Also, for DELETE, INSERT, and UPDATE statements that currently use SET ROWCOUNT, we recommend that you rewrite them to use the TOP syntax. For more information, see DELETE (Transact-SQL), INSERT (Transact-SQL), or UPDATE (Transact-SQL).

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