<p>I have an asp.net text form that contains numerous decimal fields that are optional. I want to selectively update the database but not inserting a "0" for fields that do not have data (maintaining the null status). </p>

<p>Typically, I would create multiple functions, each with a different signature to handle this. However, I am inserting the data through a webservice which does not allow a function with the same name to have multiple signatures. I can think of a couple ways to work around this, but none "pragmatically".</p>

You could use the
DBNull class
to represent a null value on your web service code.
While you would still have to use a surrogate value (e.g., 0 or -1), and then just evaluate that value to convert it into the
```
DBNull
```
object.