iGrid vs. Visual Basic DataGrid

VB DataGrid problems (sorting, coloring, etc)

VB DataGrid does its main work, displaying and editing of ADO Recordsets, enough good, but it becomes useless if you wish to do a little bit more with your data and what your users really need - for instance, color them depending on some criteria. Here is a short list of main difficulties you face in Visual Basic DataGrid:

1. You cannot format cells with colors and fonts.

2. You cannot sort DataGrid just clicking its column headers.

3. DataGrid does not implement such cell editors as combobox and checkbox.

4. Cell text cannot be multiline or use other format options.

5. Very few events to control the user's actions.

Data binding and unbound mode

Visual Basic DataGrid allows you to upload data from a database table or query, but in many cases you may need to work with data stored not in a database. It can be an array, or text file, or something else. To display these data in DataGrid, you need to load them into a temporary interim data store and only after that bind your DataGrid to it to display the data.

But this is just a half of the problem - you cannot freely change or format your data in individual cells as they are in fact the underlying recordset fields. And this is really annoying if you need data of different data types and/or formatting in the same column.

iGrid is free from all the drawbacks mentioned above. Unbound mode when you can change its cell independently is its main work mode, though it also allows you to upload ADO and DAO Recordsets and use all the features with them without any restrictions.

Versatile data binding

Despite the fact that iGrid works mainly in unbound mode, you can make it a data-bound control by adding some code. A big benefit of this approach is the ability to control all aspects of the functionality - you will never get such a level of control in DataGrid.

The main demo of iGrid contains a series of samples which demonstrate different approaches of data binding you can implement with iGrid. You can cache the user changes on the field-, row- or entire grid-level; you can store your edited data in an ADODB Recordset or retrieve and update them directly through an ADODB Connection object:

This is ready-to-use code you can use in your apps for free as templates, and (what is most important!) change the functionality in every particular scenario to fully suit your users' needs.

Add to this the modern look-n-feel which is consistent with the latest OS versions such as Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7!

Discover more iGrid's advantages in the Control Tour »