What about grouping?

[Roygar]

I'm working with the new DomainDataSource, sorting and filtering now is done on the server... but what about grouping?? cant be grouping be done on the server too? there's a way? or an example??

[Rossen Hristov]

Hello Roygar,

WCF RIA Services does not support grouping. It will simply order, i.e. sort the items by the grouping criteria, but not actually group them and return groups.

Grouping can be done by RadGridView on the client, though.

Regards,
Ross
the Telerik team

[Roygar]

Ok, but the grouping on the RadGridView is done only on the current page, so the result will be incorrect (not all rows will be considered for the grouping)... for this to work I'll have to load all the rows (not just a page)...
 
Any ideas on how we can we use the grouping functions of the RadGridView without loading all the rows? I was hoping that the new RadDomainDataSource will offer and alternative...

[Rossen Hristov]

Hi Roygar,

You are correct. Since grouping is done solely on the client, it is done only on the current page.

Unfortunately you can't achieve what you describe. As I mentioned earlier, WCF RIA Services simply does not support grouping and there is nothing that we can do about it.

So you have to:

A. Either pull all data on the client in order to have "real" grouping, which will effectively make the client-server approach useless.

B. Turn off grouping and have paging, thus pulling only one page at a time.

Expressed in other words, you will have to make a tough choice between paging (i.e. very thin client) and grouping.

I hope this makes sense.

Best wishes,
Ross
the Telerik team

[Roygar]

Thanks agains...

Well, its a limitation we'll have to live with... Im thinking to use only paging, with the group panel disabled and active it the grouping only when the users desires to (checking some option)... and in that case load all rows... 

I'm guessing that in order to export the data I'll have to something similar (load all the row before the export)..