How to maximize the utility of built in ASP.NET Data controls (GridView, FormView, etc) for Rapid CRUD

Question

I've been developing .Net pages for business web apps for the last year or so. We're mostly working in 2.0 for a myriad of reasons.

Much of the work is prototyping to throw data on a page, collect user feedback on the data and interactions, rinse and repeat. I find that built in .Net controls are great for this type of rapid visualization, especially when I already have business objects or DataSources written for other purposes.

Much of my other work is in creating CRUD interfaces for users to customize their implementation of our products. The place I struggle most is in creating simple, cleanly coded CRUD implementations for the various items they need to customize.

Can anyone describe for me in simple terms the proper usage of the built in .Net controls for rapid creation of maintainable CRUD applications?

Keys to consider:

1) What combination of the controls are most useful for CRUD?
2) What do you factor in when choosing one vs another (key tradeoffs)?
3) How are you wiring up the control or controls for maximum ease of implementation?
4) What are the primary limitations you find in using the controls?
5) When you need to do something a little bit more customized - what's your favorite alternative?
6) Is there something huge I'm missing where I should be moving on to some other framework or toolset (MVC? MVVM? XAML?)

Answer 1

"Can anyone describe for me in simple terms the proper usage of the built in .Net controls for rapid creation of maintainable CRUD applications?"

Honestly this is a pretty broad (not to mention situational) question that would probably take pages and pages to answer to your satisfaction.

However, I do highly recommend that you check out ASP.Net Dynamic Data framework. It was built for exactly this - RAD CRUD.