NET 2.0 introduced a number of new Web controls designed for accessing and modifying data. NET 2.0's data source controls make it possible to retrieve, insert, update, and delete data without having to write the tedious dedata access code that was so commonplace in ASP. Previous installments of this article series have looked at returning, inserting, and deleting data using the Sql Data Source control. These controls can work in unison with the data source controls to facilitate inserting, updating, and deleting data.

These controls allow page developers to declaratively access and modify data without writing any code to perform the data access. In this article we will examine basics of using the Sql Data Source and Grid View controls to update records from a database.

This article is one in a series of articles on ASP. In particular, we look at enabling editing support in the Grid View. This article focuses on the Sql Data Source control; for a detailed look at updating with the Object Data Source, refer to the "Editing, Inserting, and Deleting" tutorials in my Working with Data in ASP. Let's explore the updating "action" for the Access Data Source and Sql Data Source controls in more detail.

There was no way in hell I was going to accept the solution of manually re-populating each field I had bound in my edit and insert templates for my Form View.

And further down the stack: “Exception: is not a valid value for Int32”. Since this is a Form View control, we don’t have the ability to use a Bound Field control with 2 very useful properties: Null Display Text and Convert Empty String To Null.

It would be nice to tell ODS to enable sending null values from any control we want. I used his clipping because it describes perfectly the problem I had, along with many, many others.

NET VERSIONS: 2.0 Cache In Using the Object Data Source Control Object Instantiation and Data Caching By Dino Esposito One of the hot new features of ASP.

NET 2.0, data source controls are far from being the panacea of all data access pains.