Inserting a record using databound controls

This seems like it should be simple.  I'm probably missing something obvious.. but here goes...

How do I have a form for entering a new customer ( for example ),using databound controls on that form   I'm not opening a dataset to start with, so I can't just insert a record into that dataset.

I suppose I could do a select saying something like "where customerID = -1" ( which would return zero rows ), and then insert a row into the empty dataset, but that seems kind of ugly.

Is there a "right" way to do this    My appologies if this is a stupid question.

Thanks,

Kirk