Exploring the Data View Web Part

Companies typically use a multitude of repository types to store and manage their data. A company may use SQL Server to store relational data; the Windows file system for storing semi-structured data and eXtensible Markup Language (XML) files to hold hierarchical data. The need to aggregate and manage data in a central location is a very common requirement within portal environments. To cater to this need, you could build custom Web Parts using Visual Studio.NET to incorporate various data sources. Instead, for a range of scenarios, you will want to try to use the Data View Web Part first. The Data View Web Part is an advanced tool that allows you to create solutions for viewing and managing data in a fraction of the time it would take you to build a similar solution in Visual Studio.NET. The Data View Web Part lets you view and manage data coming from different data sources, like Web services, SharePoint lists and server-side scripts.

Data View Web Parts are able to retrieve data from various data sources in the form of XML even if the data itself in its original form is not XML, and make it very easy to adjust the appearance of that data by applying eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) to it. XSLT is used for transforming the structure of an XML document. The XML data within a Data View Web Part can be formatted using the Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer’s Design view. The next procedure explains how to open a SharePoint page in design view using a Internet Explorer.

Open Internet Explorer and navigate to a SharePoint site.
Click the Page button at the upper right corner. If SharePoint Designer is installed on your machine, this opens a menu that contains the option Edit with Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer. Click Edit with Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer, which by default, opens the SharePoint site in SharePoint Designer’s Design view.
If the page is opened in another view, you can switch back to Design view by clicking the Design tab at the bottom.
The Data View Web Part offers many possibilities, such as consuming various data sources, sharing data sources, defining the look and feel of data overviews, and adding editing capabilities to data overviews. The Data View Web Part is all about aggregating and managing data from various data sources. The first thing you need to learn about the Data View Web Part is how to import and display data. To start this discussion, we will take a closer look at data sources, data source libraries, and SharePoint Designer.

Importing and displaying Data
From the perspective of the Data View Web Part, a data source is a repository of information or an end point that provides access to an information repository, for example, a database or a Web service. The Data Source Library is the main entry point for accessing and managing data sources within SharePoint sites.

SharePoint Designer, based on FrontPage technology, is a powerful tool that makes both Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 implementations a lot easier. SharePoint Designer lets you define new data sources, add Data View Web Parts to SharePoint Web pages that access, and display these data sources in a visual way. Manipulating the Data View Web Part visually might seem to have to do less with software development when compared to typing code yourself, but the fact of the matter is, nowadays creating software becomes more and more abstract and visual.


for more refer:http://www.lcbridge.nl/vision/2009/dvwp.htm