Escape characters

What should one pass as a field value into a table in the insert
statement if the value contained a percentage symbol (%) or the
asterisk symbol (*), since both of these have special wildcard
meanings. What if I want to pass the special meanings and pass them as
literals? Is there any escape character that I must use? I am using
ADO.NET v1.1 of the framework with VB.NET. The database is Microsoft
SQL Server 2000.Replied in Micorsoft.public.sqlserver.server please do not multi-post.

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John
"Sathyaish" <sathyaish@.gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1125988847.238366.259770@.g47g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...
> What should one pass as a field value into a table in the insert
> statement if the value contained a percentage symbol (%) or the
> asterisk symbol (*), since both of these have special wildcard
> meanings. What if I want to pass the special meanings and pass them as
> literals? Is there any escape character that I must use? I am using
> ADO.NET v1.1 of the framework with VB.NET. The database is Microsoft
> SQL Server 2000.