Binary ID

Question

I'm working with an SQL database. I have a webform that populates databound controls with a strongly typed dataset. In the dataset I have identity columns that are 8-bit binary data type in SQL. I'm having trouble working with/ updating this column in my form. Specifically, I would like to create a dropdown box with those binary ids as the value and compare those values in the dropdown to a value in the dataset. The problem seems to be that the dropdown.value will only store as a string. So something like: if (somedataset.table[0].binaryidcol == dropdown.items[1].value) won't work because it is trying to compare the dataset type (system.byte) to a string in the value. Any suggestions on how to make both data types comparable and how to ultimately update a new Binary ID in the database would be greatly appreciated.