Built-in UI for searching means that you won't need to write any code to add a user interface to the grid for your end-users to seach with. For example, if you want users to search by hitting "control-f" (Find), and display a search box to find items containing some text, then you wouldn't have to design and code the search box, the datagrid would have that already coded for you. (That's just an example, I don't know what the actual user interface will be).

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Odi Kosmatos
VP, R&D, Xceed

Can you update us on the Field chooser (a.k.a. column chooser),I think this is an important function,the thing is that when you are developing a enterprise application this comes into play and we have to provide some code to this or write our own classes and method or controls for this taking into consideration objects and field.Well hope you have a good solution that can be managed by the developers.

Best of Luck.

Another feature that you may want to consider providing is a easier way to use StatFunctions in code.  For instance I am developing a app where the user can turn on and off StatFunctions either in a Group calculation or in the Total calculation.  (Also the user will be able to turn on and off Caclulations in detail rows as well.)  The user can also select which type of calculations that a Group Calc / total Calc will use.  At this time its very difficult to do this.  I basically need to generate a large String (a resource dictionary)  and I load it everytime the user changes a calculation....  like:

           // generates the resourcedictionary string here

            MemoryStream stream = new MemoryStream(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(s1));
            ResourceDictionary rd = null;
            rd = (ResourceDictionary)XamlReader.Load(stream);
            Application.Current.Resources.Clear();
            Application.Current.Resources = rd;

 

There really should be a easy way to select a column and turn on group / total calculations (and to select what type of calculation is to be applied). 

 

 

 

 

Will the upcoming Export to Excel feature be able to export Detail rows?  Could someone tell me what the limitations of this Export will be?

Zed:

Will the upcoming Export to Excel feature be able to export Detail rows?  Could someone tell me what the limitations of this Export will be?

Keep in mind that all I'm about to say is in flux. Our approach so far is:

• Can only export a grid having a DataGridCollectionView as a source.
• Won't export any UI format (colors, alignment, grid lines, ...)
• Images won't be exported.
• The raw data will be exported (no Converter will be active). For instance, this means that we'll export the ID instead of the corresponding "foreign-table" value (think ComboBox).

 

• Will allow you to specify a group header format. It will be independent from the DataGrid's GroupHeaderControl (not automatic).
• Will convert the StatFunctions to Excel formulas. They will be output in "footers" (end of groups and spreadsheet).
• You'll have a way to specify how deep in grouping (up to N group level) you want to display StatFunction results.
• FixedColumnCount will be respected.
• Possibility to export different columns than what is currently displayed in the DataGrid (Column.Visible).
• Possibility to display or not the column header and "fix it" or not (freeze pane).
• DetailGrids can be exported as well. Although we'll only support a flat representation. The columns of all the grids (master and details) will be put one after the other from left to right.
• You'll have the option of repeating or not the master datas when a new detail row is exported.

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Michel Fortin
Developer
Xceed Software Inc.

Hello there,

I would like to know when you will have complete compatibility with the Entity Framework (EF)?

I have struck a problem where I have a master / detail grid, and in the detail grid one of the columns is another entity (effectively a lookup table) against which I would like to have a combo-box.  The problem is that in the detail entity, EF generates the column that has the associated lookup table as a class, not a scalar Id.  And as a result I wasn't able to wire up a combo-box that could write back to that column.

 I was told by support that this was due to EF being relatively new and that complete compatibility would become available in future versions.  Can you give any idea of if/when this would be done.

This is a problem for me, as I am designing the architecture of a new application.  I want to make sure the Data Access Layer (DAL) is compatible with the xCeed datagrid, as grids will be used heavily in the application.

 Effectively I have gone down this route :

 1.  Created and tested a DAL using "Linq to Sql" (L2S).  This works nicely except that L2S doesn't implement change notifications on deletes and hence when an item is deleted from the datasource feeding a detail grid, the detail grid doesn't refresh.

 2.  As a result, I created and tested a DAL using the "Entity Framework".  This solved the delete notification problem, however as EF generates FK items as classes not Id's, I was unable to wire up combo-boxes and customer cell editors.

 I know that I could write my own ORM classes that implement change notifications properly, etc etc, but I am really trying to avoid such a large boilerplate / plumbing coding exercise when EF and L2S are very close to the mark and are suitable for all my other requirements.

Hi 

Please provide events for the coloring background of the cell

Thanks in advance

Indiana

Hello,

Could someone tell us more about this Persist and restore user settings?

Where will it save it file? registry?  Could it actually be saved to a database somehow?  Or wherever the programmer wants it to be?

 

Actually, the choice of the location will be yours.  The settings are saved in a class that can be serialized as Xml. This means that you can serialize it within a database, a file, in your application settings or any where else that fits your needs. While not fully extendable, you can derive from the base classes and persist settings that are not saved by default.

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Technical Writer/Technical Support Team Manager - Xceed Software

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.

@ Indiana Jones

There is currently no plans to provide any such events at the moment. The suggested method is to use existing concepts such as Style triggers ( DataTriggers) to achieve this type of behavior.

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Marc Laroche
Software Developer
Xceed Software Inc.

I don’t suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it. - Unknown

This is a function that we really need, as the current filtering capabilities (ver 2.0) are far too limited :

> Use of check box only,no filtering expressions

> Filtering is fired as you check instead of at the validation/exit of the filtering tool

Think that what you require has already been implemented in v3.0. Using the column AutoFiltering capability you can get a list of the distinct values with check boxes next to them and as you check/uncheck the displayed rows is changed without having to close the filtering list.

Hi, what is the difference with version 2, the behavior that you describe is aloready active in v2 (the one that we use in production).

But this has several drawbacks :

1) the automatic refresh is awkward and very lengthy (in time), we would prefer a refresh when you confirm your filtering.

2) The filtering capabilities (list of distinct elements) are too limited. Let's compare to what is available on other grids (operators (begins, like, greater than, etc.), ranges).

Here are my votes for 3.1 - which I eagerly await:

Most Important: 

- UI automation (also bringing support for automated UI testing tools such as QTP)
- Persist and restore user settings: I like your approach of handling this via xml - it fits perfectly into our 'save configurations' implementation.

Slightly less important:

- Data Virtualization (a.k.a. "Virtual mode”, “Lazy loading”, “Paging”, etc.)
- Export to Excel

Hi

You can definitely devolpe a formatting on a columns of the xceed.

For example if we have some double data(623.5678999090) and we need to format it for 4 (623.5678)decimal places.

something like that and also for the date,currency and units also.

This will helpful in devolping enterprise application

Thanks in advance