Error returns from SPL

I'm writing some stored procedures for a client at the moment and am up against a couple of dilemmas regarding error raisign/ handling. I want to use the RAISE EXCEPTION feature in such a way that the front end process (in this case, either Informix-4GL or Gupta SQL Windows) catches it in the same way it would an Informix-generated error. I am using numbers -5000 to -5999 for application-generated exceptions (the ancient File-It! numbers) but I'd also like to be able to pass a descriptive string back; also the mechanism only seems to be effective if I *don't* have an "ON EXCEPTION IN (-5000 TO -5999)" clause. The whole thing seems a bit messy, what with 4GL generating "Unknown message" text and all that, and I can't seem to get SPL's error string handling features to have the desired effect of passing a customised string back to 4gl along with the error number. The other thing I'd like to be able to do is to raise a customised NOTFOUND condition if the code inside the procedure doesn't find any rows meeting the parameters it was called with. I'm relatively new to these concepts and would appreciate any guidelines, code samples and suggestions that anyone can offer. Thanks very much. akent@cix.compulink.co.uk (Andy Kent) ------------------------------------- 44 272 742815