>>My question is, is there a better way of determining if an error occurred other than checking for the absence of a DataTable? <

Steve,

One of the things that we do is to pass a Message parameter along with the method calls (a string passed by reference). If that Message variable comes back other than "", then you can display the message or whatever. We typically log the error at the DataAccess level to the system's EventLog, but then we also have the option to display the error message at the UI level.

~~Bonnie