ASP.NET - splitting up a large database table

[Vedder]

Hi

I am currently working on a project for a telephone system at work that does the following:

Reads a .csv file of all name and numbers
loops through the file and adds them to an Access DB

Access DB is then accessed through datagrids and repeaters.

All of that is going fine apart from a page I have set up to display the telephone contacts in an A-Z fashion. I can display all the data alpabetically but the trouble is with 200 entries its creates a massive page. I decided to create a couple of methods that took every 40-50 and have multiple datagrids across the page, that looked fine until i realised that the next column will start at "A" again and the client wants it to carry on, like the following below:

First Column Second Column

#001 A.Andrews 056 P.Parker
#002 B.Andrews


What I am getting is

First Column Second Column

#001 A.Andrews 087 A.Aname
#002 B.Andrews 088 B.Aname
""
""
"" 056 P.parker


Basically my question is can you split a repeater so it works in this fashion or do anything with a datagrid that does not involve paging etc...

Thanks for your time and any help appreciated!

 

[Gman]

can't you just use the paging effect in a datagrid, I know idealy you'd stick with the repeater as your not wanting to alter anything but the datagrid will give you more options.

if you have a look into .Net 2.0 you can do this easily as the paging ability is a lot easier and more efficent. you could even tie in a drop down list using Ajax so that it filters the datagrid's contents based on names starting with A,B,C,D etc.

could do the same with name search's so it again filters the datagrid.

Have a look at the video here http://atlas.asp.net/Default.aspx?tabid=47 that should gie you an idea of whats possible.

 

[Vedder]

Well I have done them a paged datagrid and I shall see how they get on with that, thanks for the link to that video I have been wondering what all this AJAX stuff is about. Cheers.