Question

I’m considering going at this myself because my requirements are particular and highly customized:

• The grid is bound to a
  collection of complicated objects,
  each of which may contain child and
  grandchild objects. Depending on
  data and context, the template’d
  cells vary from TextBoxes to
  ComboBoxes to Calendars to a
  combination of controls.

• TextBox cells have Google-style
  auto-complete functionality. Also
  each TextBox cell can expand into a
  small TreeView pane that allows
  hierarchy-navigating selection of a
  value should auto-complete be
  insufficient.

• Values from other controls can be drag-and-dropped into cells.

• Columns are re-sizable and re-orderable. Clicking their headers
  sorts data.

• All of the above is AJAX /
  client-side / Web 2.0 of course.

Has anyone built anything similar from scratch? Or used an effective tool to accomplish this goal? How well would Telerik meet my specs? Is it right to have the hunch that something this specific is best done by taking a Microsoft GridView and extending it myself?

Thanks for your two cents.

Answer 1

If you have a SQL Server-based application, you could consider using ASP.NET Dynamic Data as a starting point. I have used it for the first time a few weeks ago and found it quire useful. It provides a lot of functionality, but you still can customise nearly everything. However, seeing your requirements you probably will have to customise a lot of things.