How to bind the GridView with the Entity Framework in a regular and Database Server modes

This example is an illustration of the KA18615: How to bind MVC GridView Extension with Entity Framework in a server mode KB Article. Please refer to the article for an explanation.
This example illustrates how to use the GridViewExtension.BindToEF method for binding the MVC GridView Extension with the EF data content in:

- The Grid mode. All data shaping operations are performed on the WebServer/Grid side (for a small volume of data). Note that a table from the EF context used as the grid's Model should be explicitly evaluated, for example, via the ToList method:

[C#]
NorthwindContextdb=newNorthwindContext();

[C#]
publicActionResultGridViewPartial(){returnPartialView(db.Orders.ToList());}

[C#]
@Html.DevExpress().GridView(settings=>{...settings.CallbackRouteValues=new{Controller="EFGridMode",Action="GridViewPartial"};}).Bind(Model).GetHtml()

- The Database Server mode. All data shaping operations are performed on the database server side. This mode is effective when it is necessary to maintain a large volume of data only, for example 100k records. Since this mode creates special LINQ queries, this mode may be not so effective when operating with small portion of data:

[C#]
NorthwindContextdb=newNorthwindContext();

[C#]
publicActionResultGridViewPartial(){returnPartialView(db.Orders);}

[C#]
@Html.DevExpress().GridView(settings=>{...settings.CallbackRouteValues=new{Controller="EFDatabaseServerMode",Action="GridViewPartial"};}).BindToEF(string.Empty,string.Empty,(s,e)=>{e.KeyExpression="OrderID";e.QueryableSource=Model;}).GetHtml()

This example operates the Northwind SQL Compact demo database. The data Model is defined via the EF Code First approach. Since tables’ column names contain spaces, it is necessary to define the corresponding mappings at the DBContext level (via the OnModelCreating method). In most cases, this step is no longer required.

[VB.NET]
Dim connectionString = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings("ConnectionString_1").ToString()Dim invDataContext = New Inv.InvDataContext(connectionString)

[VB.NET]
' Predicate depends on user access rights, it is independent of the grid filter and always applied
invDataContext.MyTable.Where(predicate)

[VB.NET]
xGrid_Forecast.DataSource = source
xGrid_Forecast.DataBind()