I'm trying to understand databinding and am currently binding to a ComboBox, setting the DataTextField and DataValueField. How do I access properties of the datasource that aren't those two fields?

For example:
Lets say I'm creating a DropDownList of employees. Each Employee has three fields (Name, ID, Age). 
I programatically bind to this list of Employees, that is created on initial page load, setting my DataTextField equal to name, and DataValueField equal to ID.
I then later in the page, after postback, want to access the Age of the currently selected employee.

How can I do this?

Is it possible to cast my SelectedItem back to an Employee and use its properties? (I've attempted this but had no luck).

 Thanks in advance.

The only way you can do this is to perform a lookup in the database

SELECT Age From Employees WHERE EmployeeID = @ID 

@ID is the selectedvalue