SQL Server Raiserror not causing exception in .NET client

Question

I have a stored procedure on a SQL Server 2005 database which has a statement like this:

  IF @Condition = 0
    BEGIN
     RAISERROR('some error message',16,1)
     RETURN
    END

and it's called from a C# client like so:

 try
           {
                SomeVariable = SqlHelper.ExecuteScalar(GetConnectionString(), "MySP", new object[] { param1, param2});
            }
            catch (SqlException e)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(e.Message);
            }

However there's no exception being raised. The condition in the SP is always true for testing. To verify this, I copied the call from SQL Server Profiler and executed it in a query window and the ErrorMessage was printed which means the error is raised.

Not sure what's happening.

Answer 1

Is it something to do with the severity level? If you up severity to 19 does it raise the exception through to your code?

Answer 2

According to SQL Books online severity of 16 "Indicates general errors that can be corrected by the user." - so that severity is OK.

I only have SQL 2008 to work with, but I have tested the RAISERROR('some error message',16,1) and the error was caught in my c# app. Are you sure the error is not being handled in your "SqlHelper" class?

Answer 3

I went through the SQL Helper class and found out that ExecuteScalar eats the exception and returns null. I switched to ExecuteDataSet which doesn't do this. I expected the different Execute.. method to behave the same way. The other way is to use ExecuteScalar and when the SP detects an error, it does a SELECT some error number which can be handled in the client.

Answer 4

From the Books online

Specify a severity of 10 or lower to use RAISERROR to return a message from a TRY block without invoking the CATCH block.