DAL and a DropDownList that appears in multiple places throughout my site

Hi All,

Many thanks in advance.  Here's where I am with my project -

I have a dropdownlist that appears throughout my site, powered by an <accessdatasource> control (I know, I know...). 

I'm trying to move my application to a 3-tier and am grappling with the "right" way to work with the DAL. 

My question: Do I need to create a tableadapter connection in the page_load event of every page that this dropdownlist appears on?  Would I be better off just creating a custom control with the binding in the code-behind of that custom control?  Since I use this dropdownlist in multiple places across multiple pages, would I be better off creating the tableadapter in the master-page code-behind?

I anxiously await your tutilage, oh great dot-netted ones.

Thanks!
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