What is the best way to deal with DBNull's

Question

I frequently have problems dealing with DataRows returned from SqlDataAdapters. When I try to fill in an object using code like this:

Answer 1

Brad Abrams posted something related just a couple of days ago http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/archive/2009/02/09/framework-design-guidelines-system-dbnull.aspx

In Summary "AVOID using System.DBNull. Prefer Nullable instead."

And here is my two cents (of untested code :) )

// Or if (row["fooColumn"] == DBNull.Value)
if (row.IsNull["fooColumn"])
{
   // use a null for strings and a Nullable for value types 
   // if it is a value type and null is invalid throw a 
   // InvalidOperationException here with some descriptive text. 
   // or dont check for null at all and let the cast exception below bubble  
   value = null;
}
else
{
   // do a direct cast here. dont use "as", "convert", "parse" or "tostring"
   // as all of these will swallow the case where is the incorect type.
   // (Unless it is a string in the DB and really do want to convert it)
   value = (string)row["fooColumn"];
}

And one question... Any reason you are not using an ORM?