Visual Basic 2005: A Developer's Notebook

Use a Better Data-Bound Grid

The DataGrid that shipped with .NET 1.0 and 1.1 had a slew of limitations. It was difficult to customize, nearly impossible to extend, and had no support for important features like modifying or filling the DataGrid programmatically, accessing individual cells, or applying per-cell formatting. In many cases, VB developers avoided the DataGrid altogether and used third-party grids or even older COM-based controls like the MSFlexGrid. (In fact, third-party component developers regularly thanked Microsoft for making enhanced grid components an easy sell.)

Note

. NET's DataGrid was a significant disappointment in an otherwise state-of-the-art framework. Now the Windows Forms team fills in the gaps with a first-rate grid.

In designing .NET 2.0, the Windows Forms team decided it would be nearly impossible to remedy the shortcomings without breaking backward compatibility. So, they chose to introduce an entirely new DataGridView control with support for all the missing features and more.

How do I do that?

You can bind the DataGridView to a DataTable object in the same way that you would bind a DataGrid. Here's the bare minimum code you might use to bind a table named Customers:

DataGridView1.DataSource = ds
DataGridView.DataMember = "Customers"

Of course, to put this code to work, you need to create the DataSet object ds and fill it with information. For a complete example that adds the necessary ADO.NET code for this step, refer to the downloadable content for this ...