Working with Data Source Controls and Data-Bound Controls in ASP.NET

12/10/2010

Contents

This chapter from MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-515): Web Applications Development with Microsoft .NET Framework 4 presents the ASP.NET data source controls, demonstrates how you can bind to data to allow users to interact with it, and presents the new Dynamic Data features of ASP.NET that allow you to easily create websites for working with the CRUD operations of an entire data model that exists as either a DataContext (such as LINQ to SQL) or an ObjectContext (such as LINQ to Entities).

Microsoft ASP.NET provides several server controls that build on top of the features of Microsoft ADO.NET, LINQ to SQL, and LINQ to Entities. These controls simplify the development of data-driven websites. They make it easier to build webpages that access, display, manipulate, and save data. Using these controls can provide development efficiency when you are building business applications that rely heavily on data.

This chapter first presents the ASP.NET data source controls. You use these controls to configure access to data that you intend to use on a webpage. A data source can be a relational database, data stored inside of in-memory objects (such as a DataSet or an Entity Data Model), XML-based data, or data you retrieve via Microsoft Language-Integrated Query (LINQ). The second lesson in this chapter demonstrates how you can bind to data to allow users to interact with it. The lesson covers using web server controls such as GridView, Repeater, DetailsView, and many more. The last lesson presents the new Dynamic Data features of ASP.NET that allow you to easily create websites for working with the create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) operations of an entire data model that exists as either a DataContext (such as LINQ to SQL) or an ObjectContext (such as LINQ to Entities).

Before You Begin

To complete the lessons in this chapter, you should be familiar with developing applications with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 by using Microsoft Visual Basic or Microsoft Visual C#. In addition, you should be comfortable with all of the following:

The Visual Studio 2010 Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
Using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and client-side scripting
Creating ASP.NET websites and forms
Adding web server controls to a webpage
Understanding how generic types work in C# or Visual Basic
Understanding how to use ADO.NET to connect to and work with data
Writing LINQ queries and working with LINQ data–specific providers

REAL WORLD: Mike Snell

Not all applications require developers to write custom, abstracted data layers and reusable frameworks. I’ve seen many simple business applications that suffered from over-engineering. Many of these smaller applications can take advantage of the simple data-binding techniques built into the Visual Studio ASP.NET tools. These applications can be created quickly, typically do not require much testing, and allow developers to focus on solving business problems rather than building frameworks and reusable objects that might never realize the goal of reusability. In fact, ASP.NET and ADO.NET can now generate a data layer for you by using LINQ to Entities.

Applications that can benefit from this approach often have a common profile: they typically have compressed schedules, are meant to be websites from beginning to end, and might fill a somewhat temporary need. When optimizing for these considerations, you might find that building data-bound applications by using the server controls in ASP.NET is fast, easy, and economical.

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