Helen,

> The reason for this is a bug in IB6 that returns null for select count(*)
> if no rows are found (it ought to return zero).

this scares me. Any additional info on that bug (the only thing I know
for now is I can't reproduce it)?

> But it is always wise practice to initialise variables, in all cases.

How true.
BTW, does anyone happen to have a reference about the initialization of
variables in triggers and stored procedures? Are they automatically
initialized or not? I suspect not, but haven't found a piece of
documentation that clearly states it yet.
Regards,
--
____
_/\/ando