Unreachable code, but reachable with an exception

Question

This code is part of an application that reads from and writes to an ODBC connected database. It creates a record in the database and then checks if a record has been succes

Answer 1

It seems, you are looking for something like this:

private static bool createRecord(string table,
                                 IDictionary data,
                                 System.Data.IDbConnection conn,
                                 OdbcTransaction trans) {
  [... some other code ...]

  // Using: do not call Dispose() explicitly, but wrap IDisposable into using
  using (var command = ...) {
    try {
      // Normal flow:
      command.CommandText = sb.ToString();

      // True if and only if exactly one record affected
      return command.ExecuteNonQuery() == 1;
    }
    catch (DbException) {
      // Exceptional flow (all database exceptions)
      return false;
    }
  }
}

Please, note, that finally doesn't swallow any exception

finally {
  // This code will be executed; the exception will be efficently re-thrown
}

// And this code will never be reached