From: esquel@sommarskog.se   
      
   Gene Wirchenko (genew@ocis.net) writes:   
   >      It is not multiple errors.  It is multiple rows of error data   
   > being returned.  Preliminarily, it is an error message row followed by   
   > zero or more rows of inculpated column names.  e.g.   
   >           OrderBy  ErrorResponse   
   >              0     Foo must be less than bar.   
   >              1     foo   
   >              2     bar   
   > 0 is the error message to be emitted.  1 and 2 are the involved   
   > columns from which the front-end will select the first one in the form   
   > tab sequence to set the focus to.   
      
   There are of course error checks that belongs in the database, because   
   they work with the data. This does not the least apply to update procedures.   
      
   However, I would recommend that you don't overdo it. T-SQL is not a very   
   good language from a general programming perspective. Earlier this day   
   I was battling how to formulate an error message that for a while read   
   like:   
      
      Column(s) [a] exists only in the left table, but they are not at the end   
      
   While the message can apply to multiple columns, I expect that most commonly   
   there will be only one, so the bad grammar will hurts the eye. Had I written   
   this code in Perl I might have crafted a message that was correct both   
   for singular and plural, but in T-SQL the code for that would be just too   
   verbose, and I eventually I found a way to convey the message that did   
   not depend on verb inflection.   
      
   I think I've written something like you have in mind about once in my   
   career. And that was in SQL 2000 with no TRY-CATCH. With TRY-CATCH it   
   becomes even more difficult to produce multiple error message. Unless   
   you return them as result sets, but then you need a clear protocol so   
   that your client knows what result set gets back.   
      
   Something I've used a little more often is when I have had a table with   
   rows that needs to be processed, and each row is processed independently, or   
   at least there are groups of rows that are independent of each other.   
   In such cases, I put a status column and a message column in the table   
   where I write error status and message.   
   --   
   Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, esquel@sommarskog.se   
      
   Links for SQL Server Books Online:   
   SQL 2008: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/cc514207.aspx   
   SQL 2005: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/bb895970.aspx   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)