>>>I have been watching the Pluralsight Tutorials on ASP.NET MVC 3 and I am totally confused to the direction I want to following. It looks like (from the little I understood) that ASP.NET MVC 3 "suggesting" (or maybe even requires) to use the Entity Framework and LINQ. Of course I don't quite understand these technologies and also find them very complicated.
>>>
>>>A couple of years ago I created a small WinForms app using strongly typed dataset approach. It was slow to understand back then but it was less complicated (I think) and I had more control.
>>>
>>>So now I am not sure which direction I should follow when building a small ASP.NET application. The application (as the starting point) will be performing the following:
>>>
>>>1. Get a data set from the SQL Server database.
>>>2. Display the data in the grid view.
>>>3. Allow user to switch to a detailed view (where fields are in textbox controls).
>>>4. Allow user to make changes and save (when click on Save button) the changes to the database.
>>>
>>>Any suggestions to which approach you like? TIA.
>>
>>ASP.NET ASPX page with GridView and SQLDataSource. That is by far the simplest.
>
>I don't know what you mean by SQLDATASource (and will try to search on it). But will it (and how) allow the application save the data back to the database (once user makes changes)?

If you have a primary key defined on your table(s), the SQLDatasource can generate the proper update and delete code. The GridView plays nicely with the SQLDatasource and will use the SQLDatasource to automatically make the changes.

You can, if needed, specify commands or stored procedure names manually for the SQLDataSource.