Reviews
Review: TEdit
TEdit.NET 3.0.1649
$249
DVXP
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
www.tedit.net
TEdit.NET is an ASP.NET control for displaying and editing database
tables. I downloaded their trial version and kicked the tires for a
while, and I'm impressed with what I saw. For ease of use, this one's a
winner; in many cases, you can get the basics of a data-backed
application without writing any code at all.
For example, suppose you'd like to display a table in tabular format,
with editing in a simple set of textboxes and other controls. You'd also
like Add and Delete ability, paging, and the ability to download a text
file with the contents of the table. Throw in searching/filtering. OK,
so far that's all done with no code writing at all:
- Drop the TableEditor control on a form
- Add a connection string to the Web.Config file
- Write a simple XML configuration file that specifies the table to
show
- Set a single property of the control
That's it! The end result works well (I tested on tables with a few tens
of thousands of records) and can be formatted by CSS (they supply a
sample CSS file so you can get the styles right). You can do an awful
lot of customization just by editing the config file: rename columns,
use lookup tables to fill columns (shown as combo boxes in edit mode),
disable adds, edits, or deletes, and so on. You can also set up
master/detail relationships between a pair of TableEditor controls just
by setting appropriate properties.
Beyond that, there is what looks like a thorough set of events and
properties to allow you to manipulate the control in code. So although
it's easy to get started, you can also dive into more advanced tasks
such as creating a date picker control to handle data input on date
fields. The help file is in the standard MSDN format and well-written.
DVXP provides some samples on their Web site, so you can give the
control a workout online. You can also download a 30-day trial version
and test it out on your own box, along with a reasonably complex
bug-tracking application that will give you a good idea of the control's
capabilities. If you're doing a lot of line of business work that
requires just slapping a Web interface on database tables, this control
will make short work of most of your tasks.