Hopefully, you have understood that a data control field
represents an interface for a field or fields in the underlying data source
bound to a parent control (such as the GridView). This interface provides the
plumbing to show an instance of the control in read, edit, or insert mode,
creates the interface for the control based on the mode, and handles passing
the edited/inserted value to the underlying data source.
The series of methods above reduce the amount of code
required to create custom data fields. However, there is still a lot of work
to do. The next article shows you another level of abstraction that makes it
even easier.
I am beginning to create custom data fields in my Nucleo framework and to develop a
framework for this. I will be continually revising it to make the approach for
creating custom data fields even easier. However, these are the basic functions
that can be used in working with custom data fields.