I was inspired by the SafeDataReader in CSLA so I decided to implement my own but I provided an overload for every Get function which would take a nullValue parameter incase you don't want the default null value back.
Public Function GetInt32(ByVal name As String, nullValue As Integer) As Integer
This is useful for something like...
Dim baudRate As Integer = dataReader.GetInt32("BaudRate", 9600)
Where if the BaudRate column is null we just want to use our default which is 9600.
I think this would be a nice feature in the CSLA SafeDataReader.