title: Silverlight, DataPager, RIA Services, and smart paging
body: <p>I'm still trying to get my feet on the ground with Silverlight and RIA Services, and of course starting with some of the more "fun" stuff like grids and intelligent paging. I can connect to RIA Services (using a home-grown ORM, not L2S or EF), get data on the grid, and connect to a DataPager. The domain service is working well with the home-grown ORM, at least for queries. (Still working on full CRUD.) However, there are still problems:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p>To support the user application, I need user-controlled sorting and filtering, in addition to smart paging (only run the query for the rows needed to display) and grouping.</p></li>
  <li><p>So far, I've seen nothing in the DataGrid or DataPager to externalize these capabilities so that filtering, sorting, and paging parameters can be passed to the server to build the appropriate query.</p></li>
  <li><p>The datasets are potentially quite large; my table I've chosen for prototyping work can have up to 35,000 entries at some customers, and I'm sure there are other tables far larger that I will have to deal with at some point. So the "smart paging" aspect is essential.</p></li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Ideas, suggestions, guidance, and nerf bricks are all welcome.</p>