Question

What is the best way to do the equivalent of execute scalar in T-SQL? In other words, using SQL, how can I get the first column of the first row of the first result set when I call a stored procedure?

Edit:
Just to clarify, this is only using SQL, no client-side language. The result set could be something like:

Id Description
--------------
1  foo
2  bar

I only want “1” in a variable.

The only way I know how to do this is with a temp table (untested, but you get the idea):

INSERT #TempTable EXEC MyStoredProcedure

DECLARE @id INT;

SELECT TOP(1) @id = Id FROM #TempTable

Answer 1

if you’re talking about .net client, then you can use SQLCommand.ExecuteScalar.

if not please add an example of how this would look exactly for your case.

EDIT:
you can do this since you provided extra info:

-- add 'loopback' linkedserver 
if exists (select * from master..sysservers where srvname = 'loopback')
 exec sp_dropserver 'loopback'
go
exec sp_addlinkedserver @server = N'loopback',
 @srvproduct = N'',
 @provider = N'SQLOLEDB', 
 @datasrc = @@servername
go

select top 1 * @id = id 
from openquery(loopback, 'exec MyStoredProcedure') 
go

However this is far from ideal, plus you have to enable ad hoc queries for this to work