Programming Microsoft® ASP.NET 3.5

Chapter 11. Creating Bindable Grids of Data

Data-bound controls play a key role in the development of ASP.NET applications. Data-driven controls allow you to associate the whole interface, or individual properties, with one or more columns read out of a .NET-compliant data source. We already mentioned data-bound controls in Chapter 10 and reviewed their basics. In this chapter, we'll delve into the details of a couple of extremely versatile data-bound controls that are a fixed presence in any real-world ASP.NET application—the DataGrid control in ASP.NET 1.x and the GridView control in ASP.NET 2.0 and newer versions.

Both controls render a multicolumn, templated grid and provide a largely customizable user interface with read/write options. In ...