Beginning ASP.NET 3.5: In C# and VB

Chapter 14. Presenting Data — Advanced Topics

In the previous three chapters you have been introduced to a lot of new concepts. Chapter 11 discusses databases in general and SQL Server 2005 Express Edition in particular. The chapter also covers the basic CRUD operations to create, read, update, and delete data that is stored in a database. Chapter 12 focuses mostly on working with the SqlDataSource control and the different data-bound controls that you have at your disposal. Finally, the previous chapter explores the world of LINQ, Microsoft's latest data access strategy designed to speed up the way you write data access code.

To help you really understand the core concepts of data access, those three chapters focus mainly on the data source controls and the principles behind them, and much less on the presentation of data with the data-bound controls. Obviously, in a real-world application this is not enough and you need a way to present data in a clear and attractive way.

The data-bound controls that ship with ASP.NET 3.5 provide the necessary options to change the way data is presented. They allow you to completely change the design (font, colors, spacing, and so on) of the data they are presenting. Additionally, you can tweak these controls to hide specific columns, modify column headers, or even colorize odd rows differently from even rows. Finally, because of the rich event model that drives the data-bound and data source controls, you can change the look and feel of the ...