Our VB programmers only want my stored procedures to return one result set. Unfortunately, this is very inconvenient for me in some situations.

Question 1: Is there a way to write code that produces multiple record sets, but that will only send back the last record set produced?

Question 2: I have been trying to use sp_executeSQL procedure to run a query and get the row count (without generating a result set), but can't see how to set a return value into an output parameter. Is there a way to get back this count without producing a result set and using @@rowcount?