Chad,

ATLAS isn't all about UpdatePanel although most people will go there first. UpdatePanel is configurable to determine when it updates with its Mode property. However, there's what I consider a design flaw in that any event inside of an update panel will cause that panel to be updated whether it needs to or not. Microsoft is still looking into that scenario as far as I know.

You can do much more low level work with ATLAS if you choose. The Web Service functionality in particular is great for doing raw data access and updating page content - I tend to use that more than anything else in ATLAS but it's a little more work, but it also gives you full control over the processing on both the client and the server.

+++ Rick ---


>Rick,
>
>Thanks for the response. I have started looking at ATLAS. In my initial testing with it, I have two grids on the form, each in their own UpdatePanel. If I re-sort a column in one of the grids, the page is calling back to update both grids. The query for each grid is run against the database, but only the grid I clicked on gets visually changed. So, only a portion of the page is being re-rendered, but the logic and data access for the entire page is still happening. This isn't acceptable for a dashboard/portal type of application where there can be x number of web parts on a page, each running queries against various databases. If I even minimized one of those components, I can't have every other component on the page pulling data again. The page would die in a heartbeat.
>
>Over the weekend I started taking a look at the Google Web Toolkit. This seems to give much more control over individual components on the page. Have you looked at ATLAS any. I'm sure I must be doing something wrong. I can't imagine that it has to work the way I'm experiencing it right now.
>
>Thanks,
>Chad
>
>>ATLAS is another option in that you can update parts of a page without refreshing all of it. This makes it possible to leave the bulk of the data alone and only update portions of the page that are actually affected.
>>
>>+++ Rick ---