Why is my SqlCommand returning a string when it should be an int?

Question

I have a query that should always be returning a single int. I have now logged it returning a string entirely unrelated to what it should be.

We\'ve been ge

Answer 1

I think that you were thinking about sqlCommand.ExecuteNonQuery that returns the number of rows affected within an int value...

This is the definition of the ExecuteScalar method:

public override object ExecuteScalar()
Member of System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand

Summary:

Executes the query, and returns the first column of the first row in the result set returned by the query. Additional columns or rows are ignored.

Returns:

The first column of the first row in the result set, or a null reference (Nothing in Visual Basic) if the result set is empty.

So, I think that the common way of returning that column is as a string representation of the column value.