Get count or find out has row

[dorandoran]

I need to find out whether the following statement has any rows or not. Either by count>=1 or hasrow. Are there any other option beside SqlDataReader & SqlDataAdapter since they might take little longer. Or basically I am looking for faster way to do this.

        string strSQL = @"select d.department_name from departments d
                        where not exists 
                        (select dm.department_name, dm.emp_id from department_membership dm
                        where (d.department_name=dm.department_name) and (dm.emp_id=@emp_id))
                        order by d.department_name";
        SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(connStr);
        try
        {
        conn.Open();
            SqlCommand cmd = new SqlCommand(strSQL,conn);

OR

what if I use this query and do the count on the statement then How would I tell the program look for count >=1

SELECT count(holiday_description) 
from HOLIDAY_SCHEDULE HS
where NOT EXISTS 
(select holiday_description  from HOLIDAY_DESCRIPTION hd 
WHERE HS.holiday_description=hd.holiday_description)

[kunal pawar]

Query required more time to execute than Store procedure so prefare SP. Another thing you can right query using self join which make it more faster.

[Frinavale]

If you don't care about the data and just need to know if a record exists I'd implement a Stored Procedure (as kunal pawar has suggested) that does a "SELECT count(x) Where Blah". Stored procedures are precompiled by the DBMS (database management system) which means your sql query doesn't have to be compiled when you execute it.

[dorandoran]

Great. I have finally create Store proc to take care of this issue. Thanks guys for your input.