A major advantage of RadGridView is its outstanding performance – it can handle hundreds of thousands of records at a time, without hurting the user experience. This result is achieved through WPF native UI virtualization – processing only information loaded in the viewable area, which saves memory use and speeds up loading time thus enhancing additionally the UI performance.
Featuring a revolutionary LINQ-based data engine, RadGridView allows for manipulating data sources that are otherwise impossible to load and process. Data is processed with LINQ queries that offer unrivaled performance characteristics and extensibility.

Databinding with RadGridView is as simple as setting a single property. The binding sources RadGridView supports include: 

• NET object 
• ADO.NET data tables 
• WinForms-native BindingList collectios

Data source updates 
To achieve better testability and loose coupling in your code it may be more convenient to manipulate data in the original data source instead of using the RadGridView API. RadGridView supports that scenario by listening to data source collection change events and reflecting those changes in its visual representation. This feature is only supported for observable data sources like the WPF-native collections implementing the INotifyCollectionChanged interface or the WinForms-specific ones implementing IBindingList.

You are free to customize the appearance of your grid with your own theme or you can use one of the several themes shipped with the control. Restyling RadGridView with the available themes is as simple as changing a property.

RadGridView has an extremely flexible hierarchy model, which allows for meaningful organization of complex data. To spare you the trouble of defining hierarchical relationship, RadGridView can automatically detect those if bound to an ADO.NET DataSet  and display the data accordingly. RadGridView’s hierarchy support also extends to .NET object graphs. Furthermore, the control allows you to define custom hierarchy settings using your own implemented rules instead of using data table or .NET object relations.
To ease the display of tree-like data, RadGridView also provides self-reference hierarchy support, which allows you to display objects which have child objects of the same type and can be nested to arbitrary depths. 

Table hierarchy
This hierarchy mode allows you to define your hierarchy settings when binding to different data tables. You can either use the relations already defined in a DataSet or define them yourself. RadGridView uses those relations to build the main grid as well as nested grids in accordance with your data model.

Custom hierarchy
For those advanced scenarios where child data may come from special sources, you can use a custom hierarchy setting. RadGridView will trigger an event that you can use to implement your own child data access logic. You can use this feature to define your hierarchy even when child data comes from legacy systems, XML files, COM, etc.

Self Reference hierarchy
Often tabular data defines a hierarchical relationship with itself. This approach is used to model tree-like structures that can be nested to arbitrary depths. RadGridView supports that scenario through it self-reference hierarchy feature that allows you to define a relation that points back to the same table. For example, consider a Customer object with a collection of related customers.

RadGridView provides in-place data editing and built-in data validation

• RadCheckBox that allows you to easily edit Boolean values
• RadComboBox for editing look-up fields
• built-in data validation both at the cell and row level
• flexible editor appearance customization. You can customize both the display of the currently edited cell and reuse an existing editor or define your own custom editors

Through this features, users can interactively organize their data in a way that suits best their needs with a single drag and drop action. To empower users to get more value from their data  RadGridView provides aggregates display that calculate values taking into account every data item in the group. You can add a variety of aggregate functions, such as Sum, Count, Min, Max, Average, etc, to your data model and see the results they produce in the RadGridView.

Data can be grouped according to several criteria effectively creating a tree of groups with the leaf nodes holding the actual data records. Users can group data by dragging a column header and dropping it in the group area above the RadGridView control. Users can also rearrange the grouping headers in the group area (again by dragging and dropping).

Advanced filtering
RadGridView features a customizable filtering, allowing you to define your own filtering descriptions.  Furthermore, the control offers Excel-like UI letting users to quickly pick a filter value.

Aggregates
Aggregates display calculated values taking into account every data item in the group. You can add a variety of aggregate functions, such as Sum, Count, Min, Max, Average, etc, to your data model and see the results they produce in the RadGridView. Of course, in the spirit of WPF, aggregate result display is fully customizable.

You have full control over the way the data is presented through cell customization and row layout customization. You can easily customize a column’s cell template and the row layout in any way your user experience team may desire. You can also combine the built-in appearance settings with your custom ones.

You can customize column templates and use unbound data columns in RadGridView.

Card Style rows
Using technologies like WinForms makes implementing custom row layouts very hard, even downright impossible. WPF and RadGridView make that an easy job: you can customize the row appearance inside RadGridView and break away from the standard tabular view. Designers can unleash their imagination and present the information in a visually appealing way well-suited to your application.

Tabular and custom
Of course, you can combine both the built-in appearance of your cells with a custom view you have defined. You can let some of your cells get generated automatically and provide your own styles and templates for the rest.

To give you more control on how the data is displayed RadGridView allows displaying your data as currency, percentage and any other format that suits your needs. You can use a standard .NET format string applied to your grid cells. You can customize the way the content of the RadGridView cells is arranged and displayed or can completely replace the control template of the RadGridView cells with a custom template. Cell templating is not the only way to change your cell visual appearance, you can modify your column settings and choose different background color for your columns, for example. 

Custom style
You can completely replace the control template of the RadGridView cells with a custom template. By specifying a standard WPF control template you can completely restyle both a GridViewCell and its editor.

RadGridView tries to provide a familiar selection API that will make WPF developers feel at home. The control supports single and multiple record selection that can be manipulated both with the mouse and the keyboard.