Quickest,effective way of fetching data

[drewdr]

Let's say I need to get one single value to work with- the balance
column of a certain userid.

Do I have to fill a dataset from a select query, and then find the
appropriate cell in the dataset ?

Or is there some quicker/better way ?

 

[Guest]

Take a look at IDbCommand.ExecuteScalar method - it returns a single value
from in one call.

 

[Eliyahu Goldin]

And use a datareader (SqlDataReader if you are with Sql Server).

Eliyahu