I noticed yesterday that my poll wasn't showing the question on the top of the list of choices, or the list of results. Viewing the source made it pretty obvious the <asp:label> was rendering, but that it was empty. Checking my code everything seemed fine, but when I retrieved the poll details through a Stored Proc I was using an Output param for the question text and it was always blank. Well, I knew there was an entire article on MSDN on this exact topic... and a quick search on “Vaughn” on MSDN took me right to the article I knew would show me exactly what I needed to do.

Retrieving the Gazoutas: Understanding SQL Server Return Codes and Output Parameters

William Vaughn

Summary: Discusses how to capture, interrupt, and handle resultsets and rowsets, as well as the extra information that they return when executing a Microsoft SQL Server query. (7 printed pages)

Yep... turns out I had goofed up, I was calling the stored proc with ExecuteReader, but I was trying to read those params before I had closed the data reader. So I made one change to my code;

Dim dr As SqlDataReader = _
    cmdGetPollDetails.ExecuteReader( _
    CommandBehavior.CloseConnection)
If dr.HasRows Then
    Dim po As PollOption
    Do While dr.Read
        po = New PollOption
        po.OptionID = dr.GetInt32(0)
        po.OptionText = dr.GetString(1)
        result.Options.Add(po)
    Loop
    result.ID = pollID
    result.Name = CStr( _
        cmdGetPollDetails.Parameters("@PollName").Value)
    result.Question = CStr( _
        cmdGetPollDetails.Parameters("@PollQuestion").Value)
    dr.Close()
    Return result
Else
    dr.Close()
    Return Nothing
End If

I just moved the dr.Close( ) up to right after the end of the Do loop...

    Loop
    dr.Close()
    result.ID = pollID
    result.Name = CStr( _
        cmdGetPollDetails.Parameters("@PollName").Value)
    result.Question = CStr( _
        cmdGetPollDetails.Parameters("@PollQuestion").Value)
    Return result