databinding

[Sabina]

i have used data binding for a dropdownlist control.the datatextfield is a
string column and data value field is a int column.if i use
dropdownlistobject.SelectValue property it returns only string.
how to retrieve the selected value as int?
when i want to set one value where i know only the datavaluefield value dont
know the index or datatextfield value how to make the selection based on
datavalue field?.