Writing Stored Procedures for Microsoft SQL Server

Returning Information to the User

So far, you have primarily seen how to return results from SELECT statements to the user. With more complex stored procedures, you will find that you need to return error codes and text, contents of variables, and internal errors and exit codes that your procedure has generated during its execution. There are several different ways to return this information, with the simplest way being to return a numeric value you can use in your application.

The RETURN Statement

The RETURN statement is used to stop unconditionally the execution of a stored procedure . No commands that follow the RETURN statement are processed after the RETURN statement is executed. When you use the RETURN statement in a stored procedure, ...