Problem Solved
After further tinkering, I got my solution to work. I had to go back into server behaviors and adjust the value I wanted to extract / compare against in the database and then adjust the variables I wanted to work with for output.
On top of that, I had to develop locally on my workstation, and then load my files on to my server since DW / we dont have a direct connection to the MS-SQL database... So it took some additional tinkering to figure out - lets hope that a battery of tests verifies that its working as expected.
Thanks for your help so far!