Oh, and another thing:

in the example above, this bit of code...

UPDATE Categories

 SET Description = CONVERT(varchar, Description ) + 'Hello'

 WHERE CategoryName = @InputParm

if @@ROWCOUNT = 0 set @rc = 1

if @@ERROR...

You can access return values from SPs if you are using a parameterized Command object in VB6/ADO - just add a parameter with the type adReturnValue. There's also a way...

Hi Ron

how about using a mixture of SELECT TOP and ORDER BY?

for example, if you do SELECT TOP 25% and ORDER BY a certain column, that should get your first...