A SQL Server technology that supports the creation, management, and delivery of both traditional, paper-oriented reports and interactive, web-based reports.
i found our logs.
my conclusion so far is that if i raise an error of 10 severity the accompanying message doesn't show in the log and the proc isn't interrupted.
severity of 18 shows my message clearly in the log but as i think amelia and isabella are saying, the displayed message in my browser remains that small font ambiguous message.
we are going to enable remote errors and see where this takes us. i'll post answers to some of the mysteries here.