You can use ExecuteNonQuery to perform catalog operations (for example, querying the structure of a database or creating database objects such as tables); or to change the data in a database, without using a DataSet, by executing UPDATE, INSERT, or DELETE statements.
You can also use ExecuteNonQuery to execute multiple SQL statements if the underlying ODBC driver supports this functionality. In this case, the return value is the number of rows affected by all statements in the command.
Although ExecuteNonQuery returns no rows, any output parameters or return values mapped to parameters are populated with data.
For UPDATE, INSERT, and DELETE statements, the return value is the number of rows affected by the command. For all other types of statements, the return value is -1. If a rollback occurs, the return value is also -1.