SUMMARY

In this and the previous chapters we've looked at the topics new in ASP.NET 2.0 that are perhaps the most vital in business or commercial Web sites and Web applicationsthe presentation and manipulation of data stored in a database or other type of data store.

A whole new approach to extracting data from a data store and pushing updates back into a data store has been added in version 2.0. In 2002, Microsoft released a free development tool called ASP.NET Web Matrix, which pioneered the concept of data source controls and grid controls that require no code to be written when displaying data.

Building on that, ASP.NET 2.0 includes a whole raft of data source controls, with more on the way, allowing no-code data binding to be performed against almost any data source. And, even better, most of these data source controls also support updates, allowing changes to the data and the addition of new rows to be pushed back into the data store automatically.

In this chapter, we looked in depth at the new GridView and DetailsView controls. We also discussed the simplified syntax for data binding and the new XML binding syntax, as well as a quick overview of using Visual Studio .NET "Whidbey" to build data-bound pages.

You'll see more discussion of using data-bound controls in the next chapter, wherealong with the use of the new master pages feature in ASP.NETwe'll look at other controls that are designed to work with data and how we can use them for page and site navigation purposes.