Parameter direction of a stored procedure

I am using the MS SQL Server Management Studio Express to create a stored procedure in one of my databases. I specify one of the parameters as OUTPUT as follows:

set ANSI_NULLS ON
set QUOTED_IDENTIFIER ON
GO

ALTER PROCEDURE [dbo].[ProcRetDbl]

@.Threshold real, @.Result real OUTPUT
AS
BEGIN

SET NOCOUNT ON;

SELECT @.Result = Channel1 FROM DataTable WHERE Channel2 < @.Threshold
END

But then when I look at the properties of the @.Result parameter in the Object Explorer's tree, it is shown as "Input/Output". Now, this seems like no problem at all since it will work fine as output, even though I don't need it to be able to do input as well, but I'm wondering why that is happening.

I am using ADO.Net on the other end to execute the procedure and I need to decide what parameter type to set to the SqlParameter object: "Output" or "InputOutput". I'm sure I can sort this out but I usually like to know what I'm doing. Thanks for the help.

KamenYou are probably thinking too hard :)

You need to supply a parameter in to give you something to read when the value comes out. I can't remember what I use for sqlParameters - probably inputoutput. Try both - what have you got to lose?|||The only pure output from a stored procedure is the return code value and any result sets. Procedure parameters must be input, and can optionally be output too.

-PatP