In this section you will learn how to bind Objective Grid to an external data source using a technique known as virtual binding. A virtually bound grid does not store its data internally, but rather, fetches the data from the data source every time that data is needed. The Objective Grid data bound grids utilize this same technique to bind to ADO, DAO and ODBC data sources. For the purposes of this discussion, we will be binding to a generic data source stored as a member object of the document class. It is important to note that the actual implementation of the data source is not important as long as the necessary data is available.

VirtGrid, the application you build in this tutorial, is a program that displays data dynamically from an external data source and stores changes made by the user back to the data source immediately. It will demonstrate the necessary overrides for the CGXGridWnd/CGXGridView class to accomplish virtual binding.

Code for the tutorial is at <stingray-installdir>\Samples\Grid\Tutorial\VirtGrid.

If you're simply reading along with the tutorial without adding code, you can still compile VirtGrid to see what it looks like and how it behaves.