populating dropdownlists from a database

I am trying to populate a dropdownlist in VB.Net that has approximately 5
selections. When I am editing on it, I want the selection to show the value
from the database. That way, if no changes are made to the control, I am
not changing the database value when I update the form. If another selection
is now made on the dropdownlist, I want to be able to collect the new value
the user entered to update the database. The final piece of info for this
is that the dropdownlist is within an editable datalist in the <EditItemTemplate>
section.