Exceptions - Can The "Throw" Statement Exist In A Block With No Try/catch Statement

how to use them then before, but am still a little confused with a few aspects. Here goes:

1.) Lets say you have a method that checks for a certain condition(s) and if it fails Throws an exception. Does it have to be in a try/catch block? Meaning can the "Throw" statement exist in a block with no try/catch statement?

2.) Now lets say we have a method that has a try catch block and in it there is a throw statement. When the throw statement is executed does it first try to find an appropriate catch block in the same method or does it immediately go back to the calling method without looking at the catch statements in the current method where the exception was thrown?

3.) I created a custom exception class that inherits from ApplicationException. Next I created a method which has a catch block that catches this type of exception and does some action. Is the System(i.e CLR) smart enough to throw an exception of this type, or does it only throw exceptions from SystemException?

4.) I know that some people are more liberal in their use of exceptions and others use it more sparingly when truly strange stuff happen like the DB going down. I am writing code where I am getting some info back from the database, converting it and then storing it. Sometimes there might be data that comes back from the database and other times the field is empty and the Null value comes back. Therefore in the instances where Null comes back from the database I should not convert the value to anything, since I will get an error. What should I do in this situation? Should I let the CLR throw the exception when it goes to convert the Null value or should I check for the Null value and if it exists not convert?

5.) In general when I throw exceptions, is it sensible to only throw exceptions of the type Application Exception or are there instances where the programmer throws exceptions of the type SystemException?