We've seen how to retrieve remote information via the Connection manager. A lot of the information we use is structured as tables; anything coming from a database server is likely to be tabular. In this chapter, we're going to look at the DataSource, which allows us to fetch tabular data from different sources, both local and remote, and in different formats, extract the fields, parse them if necessary, and deliver them to the component that requested them. We will also see one of these clients, the AutoComplete control, which offers a list of choices based on what you type. Two more components use DataSource: DataTable, which we'll see shortly, and Charts, which is still beta and won't be covered.
The skills that you will take away from this chapter include:
The different sources DataSource can reach
The various data formats supported
How to tell DataSource what to extract and how to parse it
How to implement an autocomplete text field linked to a live...