Alan,

> are you now disagreeing with this post?

good question

>If an exception occurs at any point, the procedure will exit

and return the exception -- and there will be no output.

the experiment we did shows that at least this part is wrong.

I thought a way to build an experiment to test the first part.

I mean:

1. is the output set stored in memory and sent AFTER the exception occurs ?

2. is data returned to the outside world the exact instant the SUSPEND is met ?

Which of the two ?

I deviced the following:

a. build a table TEST, like

create table test
(
id_rec integer not null,
primary key (id_rec)
)

b. filled in 500,000 rows by using procedure FillTest

create procedure FillTest
returns
as
declare variable i integer;
begin
i=0;
while (i<=500000) do
begin
insert into test values (:i);
i=i+1;
end

end

c. created the following procedure, that will return 400,000 rows, then raise an exception

alter procedure ListTest
returns
(
id_rec integer
)
as
declare variable i integer;
begin
i=0;
for
select id_rec
from test
into :id_rec
do
begin
i=i+1;
if (i=40000) then
exception abort;
suspend;
end
end

d. created a minimal Delphi with a TIBOQuery, a TDatasource and a TDBGrid. All is shown in a Camtasia video available at

http://www.sendspace.com/file/l2mrmn

e. the query has sql.Text='select * from ListTest'

At first you can see that the grid is filled AND NO EXCEPTION IS RAISED.

The exception is raised only when I try to reach the bottom of the grid.

This experiment shows that rows are indeed returned interactively (as Ivan says) and that case 1 is not true.

Thank you

Peppe