Question of Native shareoint grids vs Asp.Net grids

OK, one specific questions:
How could you pause the execution of a page carrying a DataView and check how a Parameter was binding to a querystring value?

Ah, to test things like that we test our syntax on a standard grid view on a dummy page.  If it works there it will work fine in Sharepoint.

I have to say, I'm just getting started with Sharepoint, and I am faintly reminded of the sales pitch for MS Access which, whilst being a formidible tool in the hands of a specialist, lured in  the neophyte with claims of easy 'code-free' development with bound forms and macros but which resulted in an endless stream of seized-up apps which couldn't be worked on.
I am finding it much easier to drop out of the Sharepoint tools and into Asp.Net, and just plug it in. At least you can guarantee results.

Hmm, I can't say I agree. We use the Enterprise version of Sharepoint 2007 and aren't producing as many grid view as we used to. Before Sharepoint 2007 we had to produce web reports using ASP.NET but now we can let users create their own reports using Excel Services, BDC's or even Access DB's stored in lists that have reports exposed using Page Viewer Web Parts.

There are 3rd party companies that have add-on web parts for Sharepoint that let the user enter a data source then expose the data using a SPGridView with no development. I have 30+ years of software development and I've learned it's often cheaper for the company to buy instead of build. Sadly not enough software developers understand that.

Sharepoint is a complex product and there is a learning curve beyond .NET but once you get used to it you can get amazing results very quickly. You have to invest the time.

For example, our team replaced a 4 year old ASP.NET web application (that had been built with 2+ developers) with one built by two developers in 1/2 a year. The Sharepoint replacement has far more features as well.

Of course we all come to this from different angles, and not one is wholly right, but as a freelance developesr we don't have a great deal of incentive  seeing development work being undertaken by casual users, even if we believed in it, which of course we don't, ie, the results are rarely satisfactory and we get asked in when things have gone wrong, but we are expected to use what has been created already, which is like building on quicksand.
Then again we do only get asked in when things have gone wrong so I suppose I don't see when things have gone right.
But coming back to the SP drag/drop grids, this does make me wonder whether they are the best choice for full-time code-cutters with a library of wrappers and years of experience with other grids...?

Thanks for tha, but I would have a very close at anyone on your team claiming 10+ yrs Asp.Net experience as .Net wasnt' released till 2002/3 (1.1)!

Well if you were a former contractor at Microsoft as I was and/or you participated in the restricted and public Beta's, you would have received copies of ASP.NET in the fall of 1999.

Cheers

The first widely public beta of ASP+ (before it was called ASP.NET) was May 2, 2000

I was at Microsoft in the spring of 1999 doing Java work when Microsoft pretty much abandoned Java development.  I was told to look at .NET at that time and did.  I've done a little Java since then but only when I had too.

You kept the team together all this time? (just out of curiosity)

Very insteresting. Well no one thought Java was all it was cracked up to be.
But coming back to these grids, I just can't help getting the feeling that dropping the DataView onto a form with FontPage aka Sharepoint Designer, which is spewing out masses of code, and maybe those new xsl/xml iterative structures are ok, if you truly can step thru the iterations, but just the sheer volume of code - it still looks like using DreamWeaver to write your html, don't you think?