Comparing ListView with GridView,DataList and Repeater

The ListView control is a new data presentation control that was added in ASP.Net 3.5.You may wonder why its added to the framework , and what it provide .

From what i have seen, ListView control was added to provide The following functionalities :

1.     A very flexible and customizable layout.

2.     A built in data paging support with the new DataPager control.

3.     Support data grouping (repeating items) in a flexible way.

4.     Built in support for deleting,inserting,paging,sorting,and updating the data.

Now , to compare the ListView control with the dataList,GridView and repeater control , lets look at the table below : 

	Supported Funcationalities
Control	Paging	Data Grouping	Provide Flexible Layout	Update,Delete	Insert	Sorting
ListView	supported	supported	supported	supported	supported	supported
GridView	supported	Not supported	Not Supported	supported	Not Supported	supported
DataList	Not supported	supported	supported	Not supported	Not supported	Not supported
Repeater	Not supported	Not supported	supported	Not supported	Not supported	Not supported

* Supported: means that it's provided out of the box without any custom code or hacks.

* Not Supported: means that it's not provided out of the box by the control but it could be possible to implement it using custom code \ hacks.

The GridView : it supports paging but it doesn't provide a flexible layout , since its mainly used to display the data in a table based layout.And If we looked at data inserting , the Gridview doesn't have a built in support for inserting data( since it doesn't call the insert method of it underlying data source when you click on a button with a CommadName set to "Insert" ).

The DataList : it support data grouping ( through its RepeatColumns property) , but it doesn't have a built in support for paging,inserting ,deleting , updating the data. and if you looked at its laout , you will find that by default  the datalist renders as html table and you will have to set its flowLayout to "Flow" to stop that behaviour.

The Repeater control : you will find that it provides a flexible layout but it doesn't support data grouping ,inserting,deleting , updating  and paging through the data