>I haven't played with the next version of .NET yet, so I'm curious about this nullable type that Dave Foderick mentioned. I should probably do some reading. =)
>

Object-relational impedence mismatch begone!

Here is a backgrounder: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vcsharp/2005/overview/language/nullabletypes/

The bottom line is that you can set value types, like integer, to null and elegantly handle null values in the database.

int? i = null; // this is legal!

You still have to be aware of issues like boxing. Andrew Conrad gives a really good overview of DBNull and nullable value types and why developers should be using DataRow.IsNull for handling nulls in the dataset.
http://blogs.msdn.com/aconrad/archive/2005/02/28/381859.aspx