Editor's//Comment
Tr s l gant
By David Riggs
Readers of asp.netPRO are looking for constructive and reliable insight to help make their ASP.NET development efforts more efficient, more powerful, or more marketable or maybe all three.
To that end, we provide articles that dissect components and controls, offer best practices, cover cool techniques, provide slick work-arounds, and even present entire projects. We also review many of the products you need to assist you in your everyday development work.
But sometimes the devil is in the details. Maybe you hit one nagging snag for which you need a quick and reliable resolution. Maybe, gasp, something simply not addressed in the realm of usual coverage by our esteemed asp.netPRO writers.
This point was made to me recently in an e-mail from Alec Shaner.
As a developer, the one thing I encounter constantly in my quest for information is that we all get stuck in the same place. Often I start working on a project and get everything almost just how I want it except for some nagging detail. Usually my googling leads me to the question, but rarely the answer. I generally find a way to solve the problem, but am always wondering in the back of my mind if I just created an ugly hack that could have been done more elegantly. Wouldn t it be cool to have a feature that dealt with scenarios like this? The Elegant Solution of the Month?
Because Alec didn t mention any specifics, I asked. After all, it s tough to provide answers without questions.
Of course when you put me on the spot I have to come up with something. Here s an example:
Just recently I put together a page that displays some data using the GridView control. It uses Paging and FilterParameters. I went with the FilterParameters because it should cache the results instead of requerying the database. Everything works great; however, I would like to display the total record count on the page after filters are applied to the data source. I've seen some examples of how to use the Selected event for a SqlDataSource object and the AffectedRows property gives you the count, but I think this only works when you requery the database.
The answer may be trivial and I just haven't seen it yet, but generally this is the kind of problem I would think could be answered in a short blurb.
Thanks, Alec Shaner
So, in answer to Alec s request, I am in the process of arranging a column to deal with just these types of issues. But there s always a big but , isn t there? it falls upon you, the readers, to submit the specifics to which you seek answers and advice, those things from the mundane to the mighty that delay your development efforts. At the risk of repeating myself, we simply cannot provide answers without questions.
I never thought of asp.netPRO as elegant. Sophisticated, maybe. Nuts and bolts, certainly. But not elegant. But I m game if you are. Send me the problems to which you need answers. We ll do our best to provide elegant solutions.
Thanks for reading.
David Riggs is editor-in-chief of asp.netPRO and its companion e-newsletter, asp.netNOW. Reach him at [email protected].
