custom paging and sorting in BCS

Question

I'm creating a custom .Net Assembly connector. I have to show a lot of data, so I want to page and sort that.

I've already created parameters in my model for that:

• StartRow
• PageSize
• SortField

In my view it looks like this:

In the view of my list, I can pass {dvt_firstrow} to the StartRow parameter. This works fine. It gives me the firstrow of the view

But is there a way to pass the row limit that is set in the view to the PageSize parameter? Of course I can set the limit to 30 and my PageSize parameter to 30, but if this is inconsistent, you'll get strange situations.

The last thing I want to do is sort. I've added a parameter SortField and in this parameter I want the default sortfield that is set in the view and if the user sorts the list, I want to know that sortfield. I've found the {dvt_sortfield}, but that one is only filled when the user sorts the list. How can I accomplish this?

Answer 1

in a reverse order:

• Sorting actually must be supported in your Entity definition before anything else (unless you are developing your own Web Parts)
• BDC Web Parts to display data are actualy "DataView WebParts on Steroids" (as they read externally).

For pagging i would suggest another thread here Paging and sorting with BCS

Hope it helps, C:\Marius