Manuel Abadia's ASP.NET stuff - Saturday, February 11, 2006

ObjectDataSource lets you integrate your own objects in the ASP.NET data binding framework without much work. In order to do so, you have to understand the data binding infrastructure (see my previous posts if you need more info about it) and what ObjectDataSource does for you.

Another year and another Grammy that Steve Vai lost.

This is the last post in the series about data source controls and the new data binding infrastructure.

Now I’m going to explain what does the framework internally to support two way data binding.

A data binding expression is contained withing <%# and %> delimiters. Inside those delimiters you can place code that return a value, an Eval expression or a Bind expression. You have two way data binding only if you use a Bind expression.

It’s time to talk about the abstract class DataSourceView.

The DataSourceView class exposes the capabilities of the data source control (if it can update, insert, delete, page, sort…) and has the methods to do CRUD operations (select, insert, update and delete). It’s the element with most functionality in the new data binding infrastructure by far.

In a previous article I explained the infrastructure for a data bound control (how it gets data from a DataSourceView and when the framework calls the DataBind method). Now it’s time to explain a bit the DataSourceControl class.

The new data source controls and the new data binding infrastructure is a cool feature that can simplify development time (especially for simple scenarios and for people without much knowledge of the framework).However, for hardcore developers, not knowing what exactly the new data binding infrastructure does under the hood is problematic and unfortunately, it isn't very well documented anywhere...I'll try to explain some of the "magic" involved in this.

Welcome to my blog.

I plan to post here things mainly related to asp.net, but from time to time probably I'll post something about my other hobbies (electric guitar, video games...)

Here is my short bio: