C-Sharp (C#) Group: Assigning Database Field Data

I know this is probably a stupid question.

 

da is a dataadapter of course.  My questin is if field cs-xref-nbr is an integer field in the database and nCustomerNumber is an integer then why do I have to cast it in order to assign the field data to the variable.

 

This works:

 

da.Fill(ds, "mytable");

DataRow r = ds.Tables["mytable"].Rows[0];

this.nCustomerNumber = (int)r["cs-xref-nbr"];

 

 

 

This does not:

 

da.Fill(ds, "mytable");

DataRow r = ds.Tables["mytable"].Rows[0];

this.nCustomerNumber = r["cs-xref-nbr"];

 

 

 

Thanks,

 

 

 

Jeremy Schreckhise, M.B.A.