Single Value

I have been using recordsets to access data from a database.I then loop thru each row in a dataset and assign the values to the objects on my web page.The particular sql stmt that I have right now, only returns a single value from a database. I need to assign this single value to a variable in my asp code. Can I do this without using a recordset?

If I have to use a recordset, do I just do var1 = recordset("columnname") (I ofcource create the connection object, the sql stmt and stuff first).