The net table control is the successor to the v1.x DataGrid, adding the ability to take advantage of specific capabilities of ASP.NET data source controls. Whereas the v1.x datagrid net required a page developer to write custom code to handle simple operations such as paging, sorting, editing or deleting data, the GridView control can automatically handle these operations provided its bound data table html source control supports these capabilities. The GridView also offers some functionality improvements over the DataGrid, such as the ability to define multiple primary key fields, and some UI customization improvements, such as new field types and templating options. It also exposes a new model for page developers to handle or cancel events.

In the preceding example, the GridView control reflected against the fields of the data records returned by SqlDataSource in order to dynamically generate the columns of the grid. You can data grid also specify explicit column fields to display by adding DataControlField objects to the GridView's Columns collection. This allows you to specify exactly which columns to display and their relative order. The following example demonstrates a collection of BoundField and CheckBoxField objects in the net grid collection. Other field types that can be assigned to this collection are ImageField, HyperLinkField, CommandField, ButtonField, and TemplateField.