The latest release of Telerik’s ASP.NET AJAX controls (Q3 2013) shipped the so famous virtualization feature in our almighty ASP.NET DataGrid allowing you to load hundreds of thousands of records without compromising performance. Another goal for this functionality was to replace the previous Virtual Scrolling and Paging features which were a great example but did not deliver the full user experience that a virtualization mechanism could deliver.
Speed, application responsiveness and performance are never enough, right? That’s why here at Telerik we say – “Deliver more than expected” and we do so. I am sure data virtualization as a concept needs no introduction. However, let me say a few words about it.
Virtualization as a term in computer programming means creating a virtual version of something, often used in describing virtual machines. Here we are not talking about virtual machines but rather about virtual rows(records) in RadGrid. From a user standpoint the table containing the rows is full with a million records but actually they are virtual and only a couple of <tr> elements are created and the data in them is constantly changing when scrolling.
Let’s go through the many benefits that the virtualization feature presents:
I love this part. Really. Increasing your performance has never been easier – just set the RadGrid.ClientSettings.Virtualization.EnableVirtualization to true as shown below. And YES – that is all. But don’t get disappointed there is something for everyone. Under RadGrid.ClientSettings.Virtualization there are a couple of properties you can play with so you could unleash the full power of the GridView for ASP.NET Virtualization feature. Let’s go through them:
<
telerik:RadGrid
ID
=
"RadGrid1"
runat
=
"server"
OnNeedDataSource
=
"RadGrid1_NeedDataSource"
>
<
ClientSettings
>
<
Scrolling
AllowScroll
=
"true"
UseStaticHeaders
=
"true"
/>
<
Virtualization
EnableVirtualization
=
"true"
/>
</
ClientSettings
>
</
telerik:RadGrid
>
What are you waiting for? Go out and check out the RadGrid Virtualization demo here. And don’t forget to post your feedback on our Feedback portal.
Antonio Stoilkov is passionate about sports and loves to learn new things regardless if it is about the next quantum computer advancement or a new keyboard shortcut.