>Declaration already has the variable set to empty. I initialize all my declarations to empty values. So, the only check needed after is to make sure it is not null to put the value in it. That will be in the condition. But, thanks for an alternative way to do it.

Not sure I understand that. If they're initialized to an empty value then how can they ever be null? I also wonder about the comparison you were doing to DBNull.Value ... I don't believe you can compare a string to DBNull.Value. Well, not in C# anyway ... maybe VB is more lax about that?