Differences/Similarities between GridDataBoundGrid and GridGroupingControl

[Damien Sawyer]

Hi,

I''m about to make a decision about which grid to use in a largeish application I''m writing. Ideally, the GridGroupingControl would be great because of, well, it''s excellent grouping abilities.

The thing is though, last year I did a project with the GridDataBoundGrid and ''learnt'' alot of the more ''advancedish'' functionality of that grid. I was hoping that GCG would be largely based on GDBG so that much of the techniques that I learnt last year would be easily transferable. I was a bit surprised just now when I look at the class references for both controls to see that they seem to have very different Inheritence Hierarchies and (to me at least) don''t seem to have much in common.

This raises the question, "Do I make do with not having grouping abilities and just use the GDBG control or do I use the GCG and have to ''relearn'' alot of the techniques".

I''m wondering if someone would be able to answer some of my questions relating to the differences and basically point out if the GCG can duplicate the functionality of the GDBG that I''ve grown to love. Also - If I am totally on the wrong track about the grids being different, could you please let me know to put my mind at ease?

1/ Does the GCG have an equivilient event to PrepareViewStyleInfo? I need to be able to shade rows/cells according to the data contained in them or (for example) if the row is currently being edited.

2/ The GCG doesn''t seem to support a GridBoundColumns collection. I was quite surprised by this, as I would have thought that the control is essentially column based. Is there an equivilent in GCG? More importantly, is there a way that I can manually add columns to the grid (with both textboxes displaying data AND pushbutton controls etc... ) that map to properties of the objects contained in my IList. Basically, I don''t wish to display all of the properties of my object in the grid.

3/ Can I optionally ''hide/unhide'' columns that I''ve added?

4/ Can I ''scroll freeze'' columns and rows? In GDBG I do this by the Me.grdData.Model.Cols.FrozenCount. I notice that the GCG doesn''t have a GridModel property, instead having a GridTableModel object. Is this essentially the same thing? Can the GCG do all the cool things of the other grids - eg cell alpha blending etc...

We are currently using Grid version 2.0.5.0.

Anyway - thanks very much for reading this and for any help that you might be able to give.

Kind Regards,

Damien Sawyer

[Administrator]

You should upgrade to the 3.2.1.0 version of our libraries as the support there for the GridGroupingControl in greatly improved over 2.0.5.0.

1/ There is a this.gridGroupingControl1.TableControlPrepareViewStyleInfo event.

2/ There is a grid.TableDescriptor.Columns collection. There is also a grid.TableDescriptor.VisibleColumns collection that can be used to control the columns displayed in teh grid. You can also set grid.TableBleDescriptor.Columns["Col1"].Width property = 0 to hide a column.

3/ You can add/remove columns from the VisibleColumns collection or you can set the GridColumnDescriptor.Width = 0.

4/ There is no formal support for freezing rows or columns in a GridGroupingControl. You can, however, use the grid.TableControl.Model.Cols.FrozenCount to freeze columns using the support inherited from GridControlBase. There is no way to freeze rows currently.

[Damien Sawyer]

Thanks very much Clay,

Is there anywhere I can find a summary of the improvements to the grouping grid in the latest version?

Cheers,

Damien Sawyer

[Administrator]

Here are links to the release notes of the last 3 releases.

http://64.78.18.34/squiffler/patches/v2.1.0.9/Release%20Notes.htm
http://64.78.18.34/squiffler/patches/v3.0.1.0/Release%20Notes.htm
http://64.78.18.34/squiffler/patches/v3.2.1.0/Release%20Notes.htm