Hello Jin,
Actually the OpenAccessLinqDataSource control is much more similar to the EntityDataSource and LinqDataSource controls by Microsoft. These controls are tightly bound to Entity Framework and LinqToSql respectively, which are ORM frameworks very similar to OpenAccess. These kind of datasource controls are .NET standard in terms of datasources provided by and integrated with an ORM framework. N-Layer architecture can be interpreted in many ways by the developer and it is always possible to make some compromises in order to take advantage of some functionality like a datasource control. Have in mind that all datasource controls by ORM frameworks do require an access to their respective context objects. The context however can be part of the business layer in an N-Layer application so it can be visible to the UI for the purpose. Otherwise, using customer code in order to better separate the layers, automatically means the use of ObjectDataSource for the purpose, if any datasource is used.
Kind regards,
Zoran
the Telerik team
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