When working on binding a SQLDataSource to a GridView control one goes through a series of steps in the Visual Studio DataSource configuration wizard. A step that I often use but do not look much into is that of associating a parameter source with the parameters being passed to the database.
This step is quite important and ends up saving me a lot of time when I’m hooking up a WebForm that I have built to a datasource, but although I regularly use a few of the parameter sources, for a long time I was not familiar with what some of the parameter source options even do.
For instance, the Form parameter source really didn’t seem very clear to me when I first looked at it and it took a bit of looking into to find out what it does.
If you are not sure what I’m talking about, here is a screen-shot of the Visual Studio wizard where I am selecting a Form parameter source: (more…)