The goal of data controls in "Whidbey" is to make it easier to use data controls while at the same time add new features that make them better. Below are my notes on the session but I don't think I can do it justice. See the slide deck (link below) to get a better idea of how important these new features are.
Data Controls
Types of Data Controls
Data Source Controls
Retain the flexibility of v1 but add new benefits. Also easy to build your own data sources controls (ex: SalesFiguresDataSource). Two interfaces for doing this (plus two abstract classes)
New Data-Bound Controls
Sql Data Source Control
Responsible for sorting, paging, updating, inserting, deleting. In Beta 1 timeframe will persist the connection string to the web.config file and will be able to encrypt it. The data source controls was then demonstrated:
Object Data Source Control
VS Data Component
A middle tier data access layer for Web and client. Seems like a DataAdapter that does everything better. Created from DB schema, sql, or sprocs, and does paging, fillby, and much much more.
ASP.NET Code Directory
Haven't seen this before. Basically it is a directory that you can drop class files into (cross-language supported) and the files will be compiled and can be referenced in your project. The demo showed a VB ASP.NET project and a CS file was dropped into the code directory and then the class was used in the pages.
Object Spaces
This is an object-to-relational framework that looks very promising. Mapping data to objects is a very common task.
Overall it was a very good session. I'll be hitting part 2 for sure.
Slides at http://www.asp.net/whidbey....