I have been fooling around with Functions and Stored Procedures trying to get a feel for them (PL/SQL was pretty easy, so I figured this couldn't be very hard). Any ideas on what's wrong with this (the documentation is slightly lacking):

delimiter $
CREATE FUCNTION isemployee(first VARCHAR(16), last VARCHAR(16)) RETURNS TINYINT
DECLARE CT TINYINT;
SELECT COUNT(EmployeeId)
INTO CT
FROM Employee WHERE
FName = First AND LName = Last;
RETURN CT;
$

ERROR 1064 (42000): You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'FUCNTION isemployee(first VARCHAR(16), last VARCHAR(16)) RETURNS TINYINT
DECLARE' at line 1

If you've just cut and pasted to here then you have the word function typed incorrectly and that is probably messing you up. If it is something other than that sorry I can't help further.

Hah, yes this was actually my problem. I ran into another problem, but it turns out that Functions do not support DML. Go figure. You can do it in Oracle :/