Why is the DataBind() method necessary?

Question

Simple question, I guess.

For a long time I\'ve blindly followed a (supposedly) common pattern when programmatically databinding my ASP.NET controls. Namely:

Answer 1

In ASP.Net, it's often important to have certain data available and ready at certain points in the page life cycle, and not before. For example, you may need to bind to a drop down list early to allow setting the selected index on that list later. Or you might want to wait a bit to bind that large grid to reduce the amount of time you hold that connection active/keep the data in memory.

Having you explicitly call the .DataBind() method makes it possible to support scenarios at both ends of the spectrum.