Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition

16.4. Data Source Controls

In Chapter 15, you saw how to directly connect to a database, execute a query, loop through the records in the result set, and display them on a page. In this chapter, you've already seen a simpler option—with data binding, you can write your data access logic and then show the results in the page with no looping or control manipulation required. Now, it's time to introduce another convenience: data source controls. Amazingly enough, data source controls allow you to create data-bound pages without writing any data access code at all.

NOTE

As you'll soon see, often a gap exists between what you can do and what you should do. In most professional applications, you'll need to write and fine-tune your data access code ...