Loading a datagrid with large amounts of data in silverlight?

Question

Hi

I am breaking up my project in small sections and one of the sections involves loading a grid with possibily lots of records (could be up to 1000s of records in the database).

Ideally I would like some sort of mechanism where as the users scrolls the grid, more data is retrieved.

I have read that certain controls (datapager with RIA) do this but I would like to know how I could implement this myself or do something similiar?

I was thinking about first loading 50 records at a time and when the user gets to scroll near the 50th record, then get another 50 as a start and so on. Not sure how I do this but this does not feel right or whether I should load ids of records in the grid and then get each row to load itself via an async thread but then I am hitting my database for each record?

Thanks

JD.

Answer 1

Sounds like you are describing data virtulization. Xceed seems to be working on a commercial control with this capability but to date have not realeased anything(see Xceed DataGrid for Silverlight Tech Preview! ). For some ideas from the WPF world on doing this you can check out:

• Data virtualization
• How can I improve on existing WPF data virtualization solutions?