ASP.NET List Control There are three ASP.NET list controls: the datagrid, the datalist and the datarepeater. Choosing involves the nature of what you need. The DataGrid is the richest of the controls and therefore costs the most. Both in term of bytes transferred and in terms of performance. It is justified when you use web services, when you need to go thru a firewall or when you need to work offline (as a dataset can be serialized and deserialized). The datagrid and the datarepeater see the data as rows, whereas the datalist sees it as cells. The DataRepeater is the fastest, most efficient yet cannot be use for updates. DataGrid The datagrid is the richest of the list controls. You can add template columns to edit, update and delete data as needed. You can enable working offline by serializing its data and rehydrating it back (item ptii-402). ptii-601 DataList A Datalist control is used to list data items such as customer names in a drill-in customer report. ptii-602 DataRepeater A DataRepeater reads data from a data store the most efficient way. Our recommendation whenever possible. It cannot be used when updating data. An example of a DataRepeater can be found on our About Us page. ptii-603