Dynamic ASP.net generation experience

[blacksher]

IMO....ASP services in themselves can be considered dynamic because page content is generated on the fly based on user input to the page. These are essentially "dynamic" webpages. One problem I've noticed, however, is that the ASP.net classes are restrictive for dynamic content creation.<BR><BR>Case in point: I created a simple page that accesses a db, passes a SQL query to return a dataset and then bind the results to an asp datagrid. The essential points that make ASP.net quicker to develope in (IMO again) are the preset classes such as datagrids that allow quick development. However, working with these datagrids proved to be limiting because of the strict coherence of data between the data set and the table columns when autogenerating columns is set to false (such as when you want one column to be a link.)<BR><BR>The problem I noticed happens when I allow user input to define the SQL query in some way, which changes the output of the dataset to the page. Essentially, different SQL queries returned different dataset column counts and data field labels. Having a defined datagrid that the outputed dataset binds to did not support each possible column count or datafield for each different SQL query. Creating a datagrid that did would often have to return information that is essentially useless to the query only to make sure the dataset matches the expected datagrid fields and column count. This inherently limited the dynamic ability of the asp.net classes.<BR><BR>As a workaround for my problem I went through the process of creating a datagrid for each expected SQL output. I then added some additional logic to the page that determined what type of SQL query is inputed and bind the output to the appropriate datagrid leaving the others empty and thus hidden on the page.<BR><BR>I don't have much of a problem with applying the above workaround to this single page. I know I could code out a script that dynamically creates a datagrid based on the output of a dataset but, what good are the asp.net services and classes then. And I could achive the same using ASP and vbScript which would take longer to write, which is why I dove into ASP.net in the first place.<BR><BR>I would like to know if anyone else is or has experienced similair drawbacks after they dove into ASP.net that they did not expect? If anyone has any suggestions I would appreciate those also.<BR><BR>P.S. I know the whole picture of .Net is much broader and provides a real boost to web programing. I like Microsoft's propoganda also. <BR>