SET NOCOUNT ON usage

Question

Inspired by this question where there are differing views on SET NOCOUNT...

Should we use SET NOCOUNT ON for SQL Server? If not, why not?

Answer 1

If you're saying you might have different clients as well, there are problems with classic ADO if SET NOCOUNT is not set ON.

One I experience regularly: if a stored procedure executes a number of statements (and thus a number of "xxx rows affected" messages are returned), ADO seems not to handle this and throws the error "Cannot change the ActiveConnection property of a Recordset object which has a Command object as its source."

So I generally advocate setting it ON unless there's a really really good reason not to. you may have found the really really good reason which I need to go and read into more.