Hopefully someone can help.

I need to populate a variable for output on an aspx page (ie: <%=Variable%
>) given a return from a database. I am using VB.Net, a SQL database and 
am trying to call the variable from a code-behind vb page.

I can get the thing to display in a datagrid as there are tons of 
tutorials and references on doing that. I also can output it using 
<asp:repeater> but that uses alot of code. 

Is there a way, as there was in regular old ASP, to simply response.write 
a value from a db out?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!