ExecuteScalar And 2 Rows In My DB On Every Write?

Hey folks, I was just learning how to work with ScopeIdentity and I found out I needed somthing called executescalar. Things seem to be working really well, and I think I did it write, except I'm having one strange little oddity. Everytime my page writes to my databases, it writes rows. I'm really curious to know what I did wrong. Any ideas? Thank you as always :-)

 Public Sub newoptic(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles newpostBTN.Click

If newpostTXTBX.Text = "" Then

Exit Sub

End If

Dim mySQL As String = "insert into msg_topics (topic_title, topic_forum_id) values (@topicTITLE, @forumID); Select Scope_Identity()"Dim myConn As New SqlConnection(System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("DBconnect"))

Dim cmd As New SqlCommand(mySQL, myConn)cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("@topicTITLE", newposttitleTXTBX.Text)

cmd.Parameters.AddWithValue("@forumID", HDN_topic_forum_ID_LBL.Text)

myConn.Open()Dim topic_ID_holder As Integer = cmd.ExecuteScalar()

HDN_topic_id_holder_LBL.Text = (topic_ID_holder)

cmd.ExecuteNonQuery()

myConn.Close()

End Sub

 

Oh, one more quick question if whoever responds knows the answer. Why do I need a semi-colon here "@forumID); Select" ? The websites I learned about this from didn't explain that, and I've never used a semicolon in my select statements before, so I figured there must be something special about it.

 

 Thank you