Mix07: Dynamic Data Controls in ASP.NET

This was a packed session that deserved to be in a much bigger room. Polita Paulus and Mahesh Prakriya covered the new dynamic data controls available in ASP.NET.

These are now available as a CTP.

The following controls are provided.

• DynamicList
  
• DynamicDetails
  
• DynamicFilter
  
• DynamicInsert
  
• DynamicNavigator
  
• DynamicRss
  
• DynamicAutoData

Essentially these controls make it much easier to add master-detail editing to a web site based on a database. Polita did a great presentation that showed using both C# and IronPython to extend the behavior of these dynamic controls.

Drop one of the controls on the page, and you get basic editing for almost no work. You can add a little code and the control will use UI widgets that you provide and can extend. And if you add a row to the database, it displays automatically when your rebuild and redeploy.

The demo included displaying pictures that are retrieved from the database, with no converter code required.

I've not done any ASP.NET programming in several years, but this stuff was impressive for the amount of UI you can create for almost no written code.

Note to self: must look into this more.

Labels: microsoft, mix07

posted by Bernard @ 7:40 PM