Visual Studio® 2010 and .NET 4, Six-in-one

Chapter 17. ASP.NET Dynamic Data

To create a functional data-driven web application, you must combine many complex components. ASP.NET Dynamic Data was introduced in ASP.NET 3.5 SP1, and ASP.NET 4 improved its features. It offers an excellent starting point for creating data-driven web applications following some simple steps.

This chapter examines ASP.NET Dynamic Data and the possibilities it offers to create data-driven web applications from an existing data model. This chapter starts with a simple data model and then upgrades to a more complex data model to show the most interesting features offered by Dynamic Data. You will also find many step-by-step instructions and examples throughout the chapter.

CREATING A NEW DYNAMIC DATA WEB SITE

By taking advantage of ASP.NET Dynamic Data, it is possible to create a data-driven website with little or no coding. Also, once you create a Dynamic Data web application, you can customize its behavior to fit particular requirements. In real-world data-driven websites, you must always add some code to tailor a Dynamic Data application. Therefore, it is very important to learn the most common customization features offered by Dynamic Data's powerful framework and its scaffolding mechanism.

Working Against a Data Model

A Dynamic Data web application requires one of the following registered data contexts:

• A LINQ to SQL class

• An ADO.NET Entity Framework class

Visual Studio 2010 provides the Dynamic Data Web Site template, which allows you to create an ASP.NET ...