ASP.NET 4 Unleashed

Changing the Data Source Mode

The SqlDataSource control can represent the data that it retrieves in two different ways. It can represent the data using either an ADO.NET DataSet or an ADO.NET DataReader.

By default, the SqlDataSource represents records using the ADO.NET DataSet object. The DataSet object provides a static, memory-resident representation of data.

Note

Technically, the SqlDataSource control returns a DataView and not a DataSet. Because, by default, the SqlDataSourceMode enumeration is set to the value DataSet, I continue to refer to DataSets instead of DataViews.

Some features of the DataBound controls work only when the controls are bound to a DataSet. For example, the GridView control supports client-side sorting and filtering ...