With the release of version 2.0 of Xceed DataGrid for WPF Professional Edition, the de facto standard among WPF datagrids is strengthening its position as the most feature-rich control of its kind by bringing a highly requested feature to programmers: hierarchical master/detail capabilities!

Version 2.0 of Xceed DataGrid for WPF Professional Edition lets developers create applications with the utmost in data-presentation flexibility through master/detail grids. This means that each datarow—whether in the main grid or in a detail—can have an unlimited number of details attached to it. Furthermore, details can have “sibling” or “child” details, or both, and also support headers and footers, grouping, sorting, and autofiltering, as well as custom detail relations and different styles for the data items contained in each same-level detail. Finally, custom grouping in grid and details is supported.

Add to that four new editors in both the Professional and Express editions and the result is a WPF grid control that lets end-users take full advantage of their data, allowing them to clearly discern the trends and patterns hidden within and consequently make better decisions based on that data: their data will do more work for them! Other new features have also been added to both editions. For example, a new configuration window lets you set up the most important features quickly and easily, which, when combined with the elegant, intuitive design of the object model, will make the creation of datagrid-based applications a breeze for developers! Finally, a Resource Center application now available with the component centralizes various DataGrid for WPF assets and provides news feeds for the latest developments concerning the product.

Since its release just over year ago, Xceed DataGrid for WPF has been evolving constantly, thanks to no less than ten releases, five of which have been major. Its community forum is highly active, with over 1,000 threads. The product is the most mature WPF datagrid on the market.

The world’s first datagrid control for Windows Presentation Foundation, Microsoft’s dynamic platform, Xceed DataGrid for WPF is 100% stylable and templatable, and features rich in-place editing; powerful grouping with UI virtualization; production-quality views (table and card), each with Classic, XP, Vista, and Media Center Windows themes; built-in data validation; a rich WPF date picker and calendar control; and XAML source to all styles and templates.

The free yet fully functional Express Edition of Xceed DataGrid for WPF offers a complete set of powerful features that fulfills the needs of most developers. In fact, other companies make you pay for products with fewer features than what Xceed DataGrid for WPF Express Edition offers! And this edition provides full distribution rights, free bugfixes and updates, free support, and an unlimited number of licenses per company. Simply register to start using it. Support is available in Xceed’s community forums. The Professional Edition is for the most demanding developer, and includes several more advanced features, such as automatic Excel-like end-user filtering, fixed columns, and printing and XPS export capabilities, as well as Office 2007, Windows Media Player 11, and Glass themes, in addition to the hierarchical master/detail capabilities added in version 2.0.

Microsoft’s Windows Home Server product helps families easily centralize and connect their digital experiences, providing a familiar and reliable way to store, share, and automatically protect digital photos, music, videos, and documents. Windows Home Server is primarily designed for “headless” systems without a monitor, mouse or keyboard. The software is easily configured with the Windows Home Server Console application on a home PC and allows consumers to remotely access files and home PCs via the Web.

Xceed’s components figure in the client-side and the server-side of Windows Home Server, providing both UI elements and data manipulation capabilities. First, in the Windows Home Server Console, duties for displaying charts with statistics on free storage space, usage, etc., are handled by Xceed Chart for .NET. Second, when the home server is accessed remotely, Xceed Zip for .NET is used to compress and package files so they can be downloaded as a single Zip file onto a computer over the Internet.

“When we needed a control to draw charts in the Windows Home Server Console, a colleague referred me to Xceed Software,” explained CJ Saretto, senior program manager at Microsoft. “I downloaded the trial edition to see what it could do and was blown away by the Chart Explorer application. It took all of the guesswork out of evaluating the control’s capabilities. Without writing a single line of code, we knew that Xceed Chart for .NET could meet our needs. A day later we had Xceed Chart for .NET working in our application.” Concerning Xceed Zip for .NET, he added: “When we needed a library to handle ZIP files for Windows Home Server Remote Access, we turned to Xceed immediately, and we were up and running again in less than a day!”

Dileep Kumar, a developer at Microsoft who worked directly with Xceed’s chart control, had this to say: “Xceed Chart for .NET has an elaborate set of features. It was possible to customize pretty much everything on the chart: the borders, the background, the style (3D, 2D, projection), and the text. There was pretty much no requirement we had that was not met by the control, and the graphics were fast, too. The sample application provided (Chart Explorer) helped a lot.”

In July 2005, Xceed similarly announced that Microsoft Corp. had opted to use Xceed Grid for .NET and Xceed SmartUI for .NET to implement part of Office 2007. Microsoft’s suite of productivity applications has an estimated user-base of over 400 million worldwide.

Xceed Zip for .NET is an industry-leading data compression component for .NET and ASP.NET. Powered by the Xceed FileSystem Core, it lets developers manipulate files and folders anywhere: in Zip and Tar archives, in GZip files, via secure FTP (including through HTTP proxy servers), in self-extracting Zip files, in streams, and in memory. This intuitive object model makes working with compressed or remote files and folders as easy as working with local ones.

Xceed Chart for .NET lets programmers rapidly create impressive charts in Windows Forms applications, saving time and producing great results. The fastest-rendering 2D/3D chart component on the market with both OpenGL and GDI+ render devices, it features extensive Visual Studio design-time support, a built-in toolbar and grid, built-in formulas, 3D view control and scene lighting, data binding support (DataAdapters and DataSets), and a data binding wizard.

We’ve tested all of our .NET products every way possible with the final version of Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2008 / .NET 2.0 and up, and for Xceed DataGrid for WPF additionally tested with Microsoft Expression Blend and .NET 3.5. The verdict is in: you can use our products with the latest versions of Microsoft’s software development platform with full confidence.

By supporting Microsoft Expression Blend, Xceed lets designers customize the look and feel of Xceed DataGrid for WPF in an environment targeted at their specific needs and talents, rather than at those of programmers.

Sacha Barber took the time to write up an interesting article on our WPF datagrid. We would like to thank him for his efforts! Take a look at this popular article on his MyFriends demo on CodeProject. Sacha's article discusses our datagrid, LINQ, and XLINQ, among other topics.

Have you started or are you planning to use Silverlight to implement your website? Xceed Upload for Silverlight will let you use Microsoft’s latest browser technology to allow end-users to efficiently upload one or several files to a website, even as a background operation.

Released to the Web in September 2007, Microsoft’s Silverlight is an Adobe Flex competitor. Silverlight is poised to change the interactive, rich-UI website landscape, providing a new platform for the kinds of functionalities that end-users want in Internet applications. Microsoft will be making announcements about Silverlight 2.0 at the MIX08 conference in March: rest assured we'll be ready soon after Silverlight 2.0 or any beta hits the streets!

Pascal Bourque, lead developer of Xceed DataGrid for WPF, has been nominated in the Individual Developer category for MSDN Code Awards 2008. If you like what our datagrid lets you do and what Pascal has to say, why not consider voting for him to help the judges make their final decision? Voting closes March 31, 2008, and the results will be announced May 1, 2008.

But in case you perhaps need some more convincing to vote for him, take a look at the video interview with Pascal that Microsoft has released on its Channel9 community site, in which he talks about what it’s like to develop such a feature-rich control using WPF. He also previews one of the new 3D views that will be added to an upcoming version of Xceed’s WPF grid control. As of this writing, the interview has been watched over 14,000 times, and counting!