WinForms Grid Control and the New Instant Feedback UI

Thinking Out Loud
11 November 2010

Those of you using the XtraGrid Control already know that we offer you two unique data binding modes for our Grid Control - standard data binding (best used for small and medium sized datasets) and server mode (designed for large datasets).

Each of these data binding modes addresses specific business use scenarios...Since this post is about our new Instant Feedback(tm) UI, I'll focus on server mode - which basically allows the Grid to load "small" amounts of data and delegate all data operations (sorting, grouping, filtering and calculating summaries) to the data server. This is the key to the server mode's high efficiency when working with large volumes of data. The only drawback to using server mode involves data operations with a slow server connection. As would be expected in this scenario, the Grid Control freezes until the data server completes operations and the network pipe retrieves results for the Grid Control...

With our new Instant Feedback(tm) binding mode, you'll no longer experience any UI freezing. Data operations will be performed asynchronously, in a background thread and both the Grid Control and your application will be always highly responsive - regardless of bandwidth issues.

The following video demonstrates Instant Feedback mode in action The number of records in the underlying data source is 500,000 – and as such - it takes some time for the data server to process the Grid's requests and retrieve data.

Note that the video uses a panel to indicate progress - this is optional. By default, we display the progress indicator in the upper left corner of the grid.

 

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Keith Puckett
Keith Puckett

Looks Great! Is it integrated in XAF?

11 November 2010
Chris W.
Chris W.

Very nice. And when can we get it?

12 November 2010
Sigurd Decroos
Sigurd Decroos

This is most interesting, freezing UI has always been a big issue for me.

12 November 2010
Gustavo Marzioni
Gustavo Marzioni

coming in 2010.2?

12 November 2010
Dennis (DevExpress)
Dennis Garavsky (DevExpress)

@Keith:
We are afraid this functionality is not fully supported in XAF at this time. It will be fully supported in future versions. However, you can start testing this new binding mode with your XAF Windows Forms applications in 10.2. In order to do this, set the IsAsyncServerMode property (it is hidden from Intellisense) to True in the constructor of your XAF application.
As always, we look forward to your feedback.

@Gustavo:
Yes. 

13 November 2010
Martin Praxmarer - DevExpress MVP
Martin Praxmarer - DevExpress MVP

What are the drawbacks Dennis with this mode? On the other hand we can activate this mode - but you say it is not fully supported - so are there known problems?

13 November 2010
Mohsen Benkhellat
Mohsen Benkhellat

The same for the treelist would be nice

15 November 2010
Garry Lowther
Garry Lowther

Nice - any updates on the actual availability of 2010.2?

17 November 2010
Piotr (The Timken Company)
Piotr (The Timken Company)

Why it does not work, for example, with large XML files, which contain for example; 500,000 records. But it is also acceptable way data binding with Grid Control

Sorry for my english :-)

2 December 2010
CESAR F. QüEB
CESAR F. QüEB

This mode is only for XPO datasources?

5 September 2011

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