If you have ever tried loading a large number of records into a drop down box you know that this can significantly slow down
page. A great solution is DbCombo (www.dbcombo.com). DbCombo is a managed ASP.Net control that uses a datasource to auto complete and display matching results in a drop-down box without using a page postback.The data is provided from datasource dynamically so you can virtually have an unlimited number of results returned. This is all done without sacrificing speed of your application. Can you imagine loading 100,000 records into a standard box? It is virtually impossible but DbCombo can easily handle this and it's literally done in a matter of seconds.
If you have visitors that use your site with older browsers there is no need to be concerned about compatibility. DbCombo gracefully degrades to HTML 3.2 on older browsers without losing any functionality. In degraded state a postback is necessary but it all happens dynamically without having to write additional code.
For advanced developer DbCombo contains over 40 properties. There are also numerous JavaScript functions that allow you to interact with DbCombo on your page and do things like easily get selected text or reset control. These properties and functions allow component to be easily customized for a variety of needs.
DbCombo is easy enough to use that even casual developers can incorporate it into their site and it only takes a small amount of code to get it working. Here's a simple example of how to include this powerful control in your page.
First you need to create a file called DbComboServer.aspx and place it in root of your site or application. This file is needed in order for DbCombo to work properly and is in addition to page(s) that you are going to actually use DbCombo on. Delete anything from file that might have been automatically generated from your editor and replace it with following:
<%@ Page AutoEventWireup="false" Inherits="Cambro.Web.DbCombo.ServerPage" %>
Important: The above line is only thing that should be in that file. If your editor created a code behind page for DbComboServer.aspx you can also delete that. It isn't used or needed.
Next you need to ensure that DbCombo will work on production server. Add following inside tag of your web.config and replace REGISTRATION KEY with one you were provided. If you are testing locally on your development machine you can leave this as is or leave registration key blank.
If you happen to have a hosting provider that provides license key already, you don't need to add this to web.config. ORCS Web (www.orcsweb.com) provides dbcombo at no charge for all shared hosting accounts so it isn't necessary to add this to your web.config. The component along with .xml file also needs to be uploaded to /bin folder of site. If your site is hosted with a hosting company they can place these files into your /bin folder for you.
