ASP.NET 3.5 Enterprise Application Development with Visual Studio® 2008: Problem - Design - Solution

Chapter 10. The Query Builder Control

When dealing with data, some common features eventually make their way into most systems. Data often needs to be presented in a table-like fashion on the screen, displayed in a report, or exported to a file in a standard format such as .csv or Excel. When displaying data in a table, users often have to page through data to find specific records. When displaying data in a report, users can use Find or Search functionality in the report viewer to find exactly what they are looking for. In many cases, users are directed to export the data from the system to Excel and then muck around with the rows and columns to filter the data they are looking for. I tend to think of HTML tables, reports, and exports as different interfaces wrapped on top of the exact same business objects that retrieve the data. All of these processes need to pull data from the database and display it to the user in different forms. The business layer doesn't really care what format the data is in. It just needs to serve it back in a way that the user interface can understand, and users often need the capability to present the data in the same fashion, but filter it differently.