Monday, 14 November 2011

GRID VIEW DATA WITH SILVERLIGHT


GridView for Silverlight

Overview

GridView
RadGridView is the ultimate Silverlight grid control that features unrivalled performance through LINQ-based data engine, remarkably flexible hierarchy model, advanced features such as Excel-like filtering, row details, totals, export to Word/Excel/CSV and many more. And as good looks count, we’ve created a truly lookless Silverlight Grid that can be easily customized to blend perfectly into your applications. See a detailed features comparison of Telerik RadGridView and Microsoft Data Grid.

Features

  • LINQ-Based Data Engine and Native UI Virtualization

    Telerik Silverlight Grid handles millions of records without affecting the user experience. The grid utilizes horizontal and vertical UI virtualization and introduces container recycling for further improvement of speed and memory footprint, especially when bound to large data sets. The UI virtualization technique ensures that the grid creates only the needed containers (rows/cells) which are shown in the viewport of the grid. The container recycling pushes further the speed of scrolling horizontally and vertically. This feature enables RadGridView to reuse the existing containers over and over for different data items, instead of creating new ones. These techniques combined with our outstanding LINQ-based data engine guarantee the exceptional fast performance of Telerik’s RadGridView.

    The example below demonstrates how thanks to the content recycling, performance is unhurt even when the Grid has 50 million data items in use.

    Get Microsoft Silverlight
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  • Quick Responsiveness

    Additionally, RadGridView's advanced UI virtualization enables exceptional responsiveness even when working with huge data sets.  Scrolling through 1 billion cells is easy, check out this example.
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  • Powerful Databinding

    Databinding with RadGridView is as simple as setting a single property. The binding sources the Silverlight grid supports include:
    • .NET object
    • ADO.NET data services
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  • Support for .NET RIA Services

    Telerik Grid for Silverlight provides support for .NET RIA Services. It now can handle an enormous amount of records server-side in no time. All data operations are executed on the server, which results in speedier sorting, filtering and paging. Telerik Silverlight Grid can be directly bound to a RIA Service through its ItemSource property, or to a Silverlight DomainDataSource control. Either way, no coding is required, as both approaches allow you to declaratively set the RIA Service.

    See an example showing how to bind RadGridView completely codelessy to RIA Services using DomainDataSource
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  • Built-in Paging UI

    It provides you with a navigation interface to page through your data quickly. The pager control itself can be used as a standalone component in order to provide paged data source to other data-bound controls.





    See demo

  • Direct Data Operations

    With Telerik Silverlight Grid data operations (sorting, grouping, filtering) work directly with your data objects. In a common scenario when a Silverlight grid is performing data operations, you need to create your own collection view. With Telerik Silverlight grid there is no requirement for wrapping your data in collection views to do sorting, grouping and filtering.
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  • Asynchronous Databinding

    To provide better user experience Telerik Silverlight Grid allows asynchronous databinding, which means that the application is responsive even while a large dataset is being loaded. A background Thread is used to load the data asynchronously without blocking the main application flow.
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  • Data Source Updates

    To achieve better testability and loose coupling in your code it may be more convenient to manipulate data in the original data source instead of using the RadGridView API.  Telerik Silverlight Grid supports that scenario by listening to data source collection change events and reflecting those changes in its visual representation.
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  • RadCompression Module

    RadCompression is an HttpModule allowing you to compress the entire Web Service traffic in a codeless manner resulting in less traffic and faster page load. RadCompression intercepts the bits that the server is sending back to a browser (or Silverlight-client, for that matter) and compresses them. Once the compressed bits reach the browser, standard browser technology takes-over and decompresses the response so your application can work with it normally. It is extremely useful in shared hosting environments, where the users usually don’t have the ability to enable the integrated compression of IIS.

    Learn how to compress the response from ADO.NET DataServices in Silverlight
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  • Truly Lookless, Blend Skinnable, Completely Customizable Control

    Telerik Silverlight Grid can have its appearance and animations completely customized through Microsoft Expression Blend. You can use your own theme or you can use one of the several themes shipped with the grid control, which will help you deliver a consistent look and feel in your application.

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  • Custom Layout

    You have full control over the way the data is presented in the Silverlight grid through cell customization, row layout customization and column’s cell templates. You can combine the built-in appearance of the grid cells with a custom view you have defined. You can let some of your cells get generated automatically and provide your own styles and templates for the rest. Or you can customize the grid’s column templates and use unbound data columns in RadGridView.
    To break away from the standard tabular view, you can customize the row appearance inside the grid. Designers can unleash their imagination and present the information in a visually appealing way well-suited to your application. 



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  • Formatting

    To give you more control on how the data is displayed Telerik Silverlight Grid allows displaying your data as currency, percentage and any other format that suits your needs. You can use a standard .NET format string applied to your grid cells. You can customize the way the content of the RadGridView cells is arranged and displayed or can completely replace the control template of the grid cells with a custom template. Furthermore you can completely replace the control template of the grid cells with a custom template.
    Pushing further the styling capabilities of the Telerik grid control alternating rows and disabled state features are available. The disable state allows better showing the inactive state for the entire grid as well as a chosen row/cell/column.
     
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  • Grouping and Aggregates

    Data can be grouped according to several criteria effectively creating a tree of groups with the leaf nodes holding the actual data records. Users can group data by dragging a column header and dropping it in the group area above the Silverlight grid. Users can also rearrange the grouping headers in the group area (again by dragging and dropping).
    The grid supports UI virtualization even when grouping, thus saving memory and reducing load time.
    To empower users to get more value from their data  the Silverlight grid provides aggregates display that calculate values taking into account every data item in the group. You can add a variety of aggregate functions, such as Sum, Count, Min, Max, Average, etc, to your data model and see the results they produce in the RadGridView. Of course, in the spirit of Silverlight, aggregate result display is fully customizable. 

     
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  • Totals Row with Aggregate Functions

    Summarizing the data from a column in a single cell is a feature that is widely used in numerous scenarios. Telerik Silverlight Grid control offers a built-in totals row which makes it easy and fast to add a cell which represents the calculated values across a range of data. The summary row with aggregates is available for each column in the whole grid and/or for each individual group. The user can choose to show in the footer row from a variety of aggregate functions such as Sum, Count, Min, Max, Average and etc.

     
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  • Sorting

    You can have Telerik Silverlight Grid automatically sort its columns by setting a single property. There are three sorting modes: ascending, descending and no sort.
    In addition to the simple one-column sorting Telerik grid allows you to sort data by several columns just like in Microsoft Excel. Furthermore, you can define column sorted color for better user experience.
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  • Filtering and Excel-like Filtering

    Telerik Silverlight Grid allows end users to filter data by applying filter patterns or their own filter criteria, hiding the records that do not match the filter thus accessing only the data they need. For each column RadGridView creates a filtering dropdown menu with the expressions applicable for the respective data type.



    You can filter data against single or multiple columns, search as you type or filter in an Excel-like fashion.



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  • Hierarchy

    Telerik Silverlight Grid has an extremely flexible hierarchy model, which allows for meaningful organization of complex data. The grid can automatically detect hierarchical relationship if bound to an ADO.NET DataSet and display the data accordingly.
    The control provides:
    • Table hierarchy – allowing you to define your hierarchy settings when binding to different data tables
    • Property hierarchy - the Silverlight grid hierarchy support also extends to .NET objects and can display them in a hierarchical fashion
    • Custom hierarchy - Telerik Silverlight Grid triggers an event that you can use to implement your own child data access logic. You can use this feature to define your hierarchy even when child data comes from legacy systems, XML files, COM, etc.
    • Self-reference hierarchy – allows you to define a relation that points back to the same table


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  • Built-in Data Validation

    Telerik Silverlight Grid supports metadata-driven validation via data annotations. You can use the grid with the Validation Summary class to implement the automatic validation UI provided by the platform and also benefit from the server-side validation attributes provided by RIA Services. The built-in validation operates on two layers – UI and Data. Furthermore, using the extensible event based API of RadGridView users can plug their own data validation mechanism.


     
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  • Column Types

    The Grid allows you choose from several predefined column types. The supported out-of-the-box columns are: Data, Hyperlink, DynamicHyperlink, Image, Select, ToggleRowDetailsVisibility and MaskedTextBox. They provide a built-in validation support for editing which cover most of the editing scenarios. If there are specific requirements, the built-in columns can be inherited and their editing validation mechanism can be used without any problem. Furthermore RadGridView offers flexible appearance model through the CellEditTemplate property of the column which allows any control to be used as editor.

     
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  • Frozen Columns

    RadGridView allows you to keep part of your data in your Silverlight grid always visible putting the rest of the data in context. To freeze columns, you simply set the FrozenColumnCount property on the Grid to the number of columns you want to freeze.
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  • Row Details

    Telerik Silverlight Grid supports Row Details, which can be used to present additional information related to the row in a visually appealing manner. The Row Details is a very convenient feature when the space at hand is insufficient for the data that needs to be presented.
    Row Details can also be used for providing a more convenient editing environment for end-users. Defined through a data template, Row Details can present virtually anything to the user, be it for viewing-only or editing.

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  • Selecting and Navigating

    Telerik Silverlight Grid provides a familiar selection API that will make Silverlight developers feel at home. The control supports single and multiple record selection that can be manipulated both with the mouse and the keyboard.
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  • Multiple Cells Selection

    This Excel-like feature brings the user experience in RadGrid to another level and is the most important building block for the Copy and Paste functionality.
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  • Copy/Paste in RadGrid and to/from Excel

    Copy/paste from Grid to Excel or from Excel to RadGridView is very useful when the data comes in Excel format and should be easily put in RadGridView.

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  • Localization Support

    Telerik Silverlight Grid provides advanced Localization support.  Two new properties were added, so that  you don’t have to always create an instance of the LocalizationManager:
    • Default Culture property -  you can change localized values without changing the UI culture of the current thread
    • DefaultResourceManager  - you change localized values using a new resource manager, i.e. a new resource file.
    In addition, as RadGridView for Silverlight and WPF share the same API, once a control has been localized for Silverlight, the control's declaration can be reused in WPF.
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  • Export to Word/Excel/CSV

    With RadGridView you can easily export data to Microsoft Excel/Microsoft Word/CSV..
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  • Printing

    RadGridView for Silverlight now supports printing by using PrintToHtml() method.
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  • VS Plug-in for Testing RadControls

    Finally an automated testing tool built for developers. Record cross-browser tests, customize them in code within Visual Studio or convert them to unit tests. What’s more, Test Studio is the best way to test RadControls for Silverlight. The powerful test recorder automatically detects the controls and exposes commonly used verifications. Learn more
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  • WPF/Silverlight Code Compatibility

    The Silverlight Grid shares a common codebase and API with its WPF counterpart. This means that you can achieve close to 100% code reuse for your grid logic if you have parallel Silverlight/WPF development.

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  • Expression Column

    The Expression column in RadGridView calculates and displays information from the business object’s properties. The displayed information can be a result form mathematical or logical operations described as LINQ Expression trees.

2 comments:

  1. I like your blog on grid view data.I think gridview options enhance .net grid with the help of we can easily do editing,sorting of data.I have also read a lot about .net grid on http://dapfor.com/en/net-suite/net-grid

    ReplyDelete