Dynamic Data Controls - the Present and the Future

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As part of the May 2007 ASP.NET Futures, we released an alpha version of the Dynamic Data Controls. You can watch my screencast to get a quick introduction to it. The general goal is to make it really easy to create data driven web sites in ASP.NET.

 

While the current alpha drop is fun to play with and gives an idea of the ‘flavor’ of the feature, it is not by any mean complete. Several of you have posted questions on the forums, mostly asking for ways to customize the behavior in various ways. In a lot of cases, the level of customization that you are asking for just isn’t there yet.

 

However, there will be more releases, and they will solve a lot of those issues. One other major change that will happen is that Dynamic Data Controls will become based in LINQ, while currently they are not (they use the ASP.NET SqlDataSource control). With LINQ, you will be able to customize the query used by the dynamic framework using powerful LINQ syntax.

 

In the meantime, I apologize that the feature set is still quite limited. We do very much appreciate all feedback that you have for us on this exciting new feature.

 

Thanks!

David