We're currently using the Microsoft DAAB 2.0. Recently I tried to get a return value from a stored procedure through SQLHelper.ExecuteNonQuery. It does return an integer, does it not. Well, sort of. The integer returned is the number of rows affected in the query, or 0 if 'set nocount' is on.
Turns out that you'll have to add
select @@identity
after the insert statement, and pick it up in VB with SQLHelper.executeScalar.