Comprehensive “Cloud”-ready data service
Server-side data source
Server-side data source is the quickest and easiest way to take advantage of client-side
binding as WebGrid automatically connects with the datasource control and automatically
repackages the data into lightweight format and transmits it to client-side for
further processing.
The supported server-side data source are all data source controls (AccessDataSource,
SQLDataSource, LinqDataSource,etc) and data source object, which is assigned in
InitializeDataSource event (also known as Traditional Binding).
Service-based data source
WebService data source type enables you to connect WebGrid to a web service, such
as Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Service, which is done through properties
configuration. It will automatically activate the full client-side operation mode
when your data service returns all data. It also supports paged data retrieval for
optimized performance.
It is also possible to perform data transaction operations such as insert, update,
and delete as well as advanced operation such as batch update when connected to
web service.
Astoria or ADO.NET DataService is the latest data access technology shipped in .NET
Framework 3.5. It enables data to be consumed programmatically through standard
web protocols, such as: REST, SOAP, XML, and JSON. WebGrid Enterprise 7 is optimized
to fully support ADO .NET DataService and consumes it in the same manner as other
web service technology. You only need to specify the service address in ServiceUrl
property.
ADO.NET DataService enables programmatic data access over the Web with very minimal
efforts, which includes support for sorting, filtering and paging. It also includes
native support for data transactions such as insert, update, delete, as well as
more advanced operation such as batch update.
ClientBinding™ fully takes advantage of Astoria capabilities and implement direct
interface to access Astoria’s functionalities. As a result, you are not required
to specify any of the service methods.
However, the current ADO.NET DataService doesn’t support complete paging feature
yet. You will need to use the AllData mode when using AdoDataService type.
Client-side data source
The ability to fetch the data from any custom data source in client-side is extremely
helpful in certain scenarios where you need to retrieve the data from external sites
or data services which is not supported by WebGrid’s ClientBinding feature. For
example, you may have a requirement to fetch data from an external site manually
in the client-side, and then pass the resulted data to WebGrid via API calls for
data binding.
Pure client-side binding takes as little as three lines of code, such as shown in
the following:
grid.SetDataSource(dataSource);
grid.DataBind();
grid.Render();
WebGrid accepts ISDataSet, ISDataTable or any array-based collection as data source.