Question

I am working on a Tag system for a news page designed in ASP.NET. For the system I require a TagExists method to check for tags within the database. The stored procedure I have written is below.

ALTER PROCEDURE [dbo].[Tags_TagExists](
    @Tag varchar(50))
AS
BEGIN
    If (EXISTS(SELECT * FROM dbo.Tags WHERE LOWER(@Tag) = LOWER(Tag)))
        RETURN 1
    ELSE
        RETURN 0
END

When I call this method however 0 is always returned. I am using the following code to call the method

Public Shared Function TagExists(ByVal name As String) As Boolean
    Dim result As Boolean
    Using conn As SqlConnection = New SqlConnection(ConnectionString)
        Dim cmd As New SqlCommand("Tags_TagExists", conn)
        cmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure
        cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("@Tag", name)
        conn.Open()
        result = Convert.ToBoolean(cmd.ExecuteScalar())
        conn.Close()
    End Using
    Return result
End Function

I have tried switching the procedure to return 0 if the tag exists and 1 if it does not and it still returns 0 despite the exact same testing conditions. I have also returned the actual select query and it has complained of the Tag “news” (my test item) not being an int on execution showing the select itself is definitely properly formed.

If anyone can shed some light on this, Thanks
Michael

Answer 1

It should probably be a function, but here is the stored proc code:

ALTER PROCEDURE [dbo].[Tags_TagExists](
    @Tag varchar(50))
AS
BEGIN
    If EXISTS(SELECT 1 FROM dbo.Tags WHERE LOWER(@Tag) = LOWER(Tag))
        BEGIN
            SELECT 1
        END    
    ELSE
        BEGIN
            SELECT 0
        END
END