Getting Version Information From SQL Server

Hello,

I'm trying to get the version information for my SQL servers. Specifically I want to get the major, minor, release and build numbers separately.

Does anyone know what the recommended method for doing this is?

I tried using @@microsoftversion but I can't find any documentation about it.

@@VERSION has the information in it but I'd have to parse the text, not something I want to do and it means the code can easily be broken if the format of the string changes.

xp_msver has what I need but I want to run this as a T-SQL batch so I can't access the results of xp_msver.

Just to add another restriction the code should be compatible with SQL server 2000 and, if possible SQL 7.0 (although not necessary).

Basically I have a script that I want to run on my servers that removes all users except dbo and guest from my databases. At the moment I query master.dbo.sysxlogins table but this doesn't work on 2005 so I thought I could check the version and run a different query for those servers.

Any help appreciated.
Kep.