Determining Null Values In Columns

How to find out that there is a null value in a column rather than a valid integer, DateTime or bool value, for strings I use 'as' operator to cast the column value and it returns null when column value is null, but for value types using 'as' operator causes compile error and using simple casting causes runtime error, for example:








int count = (int)row["Count"];





and





int count = row["Count"] as int;








the first one throws an exception when Count is null and the second doesn't compile at all since 'as' applies to reference types, so what is the way other than exception handling to determine null value in a column?