Review: XtraPivotGrid Suite

XtraPivotGrid Suite 1.0.5, $299.99 without source code/$399.99 with source code
Developer Express
Las Vegas, Nevada
(702) 262-0609  
http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/XtraPivotGrid/

I can remember banging my head against crosstab queries for a long time when I first encountered them a decade or so ago in Microsoft Access. Since then, between pivot tables in Excel and working with OLAP in SQL Server, the notion of multidimensional analysis has gradually made more and more sense to me - and, I suspect, to many other developers and end users. These days, we take the ability to slice and dice data along multiple axes, to group and regroup it flexibly, to see totals and subtotals and grand totals, more or less for granted. At least, we take it for granted in major applications. It's been a bit tricky to implement this sort of thing in your own .NET applications, but now Developer Express is addressing that with this new control, which brings multidimentional analysis to the client side in the form of managed code.

Like the rest of the controls from Developer Express, it's written in 100% managed C# code, and you can buy the source along with the control. This is nice insurance against anything happening to the vendor, though realistically I don't think most shops will make use of the source. (If you're OK with the built-in functionality and aren't worried about the vendor vanishing, you can save $100 by buying it without the source code). There is good documentation and a nice demo application, though surprisingly there are no tutorials - the other recent Developer Express products have come with excellent Flash tutorials, but not this one. Still, the workflow is much the same as with their other grid products: drop it on a form, set the data source, run the designer to set up properties (you can adjust things like which fields map to rows and columns visually at either design time or run time) and you're off to the races.

The XtraPivotGrid plays with the usual suite of embeddable editors that the other Developer Express products use, so you get in-cell editing for things like images, calendars, colors, combo boxes, and so on. It also ties into the same flexible, skinnable look and feel system as their other version 3 controls (one minor caution: it won't co-exist with the older version 2 Developer Express controls). You can bind it to ADO.NET data or to anything that implements the IList interface. You get multiple levels of totals, fast drag and drop customization, good (indeed, overwhelming) customization of the user interface, interval grouping, the ability to add unbound fields to the grid, and full event support, among other goodies. If your application requires data analysis, as opposed to just data display, this one could save you a lot of code-writing. There's a trial version available for download.

  Click for larger screenshot

Mike Gunderloy is the lead developer for Larkware and author of numerous books and articles on programming topics.