DataGrid for Blazor - How to use the gRPC service with the CustomData property

Hello Vova,

Thank you for your response.
gRPC now is a part of .Net core infrastructure, more and more developers are using gRPC instead of WebAPI.
We need a easy way of providing data to your controls using gRPC services.
Could you create a public ticket for gRPC services support, so that everybody could track the progress.

Thank you.

Hello Konstantin,

You can mark the current thread as a public one, so other our users can track it.

Regards,
Vova

I would also like to emphasize the importance of gRPC - this technology seems to be gathering a lot of momentum. I think that full gRPC support for some of your major controls should be added to your road map.

Regards
Andrew

Hello Andrew,

Thank you for your feedback. To help us better understand your gRPC requirements, please share the following information with us:

1. Your use-case scenarios with gRPC and DevExpress components (list them).
2. How do you want to use gRPC in this scenario? Why do you think it is more appropriate than Web API and other services?
3. What data structure is returned by your gRPC service?
4. How do you implement sorting, grouping and filtering in your gRPC service? There is no general convention for this in gRPC, so we need details of your service implementation.

Regards,
Vova

I agree with Andrew regarding the importance of gRPC.

@Brent Hitzeroth: Would you please also answer these questions (to help us better understand your gRPC requirements)?

1. Your use-case scenarios with gRPC and DevExpress components (list them).
2. How do you want to use gRPC in this scenario? Why do you think it is more appropriate than Web API and other services?
3. What data structure is returned by your gRPC service?
4. How do you implement sorting, grouping and filtering in your gRPC service? There is no general convention for this in gRPC, so we need details of your service implementation.

Hello DevExpress,
Let me explain the problem in general.
Most modern software products have several UI client applications (Desktop, Web, Mobile). UI applications are consuming the same web services to get data.
Lets say client UI has to get from web service the list of orders. We could implement one "GetOrders" method in web service and use it from all types of UI client applications. How we are getting data from web service is not depend from your controls.
The problem appears when your controls are involved in data retrieval logic. That is happening for data grid and combobox in "server" or "virtual" mode. In some way (defined by you), the information about next portion of data has to be passed to web service, than at web service, that information has to be converted to queries to database and reverted back to UI client.
Lets check how "GetOrders" method could be implemented for desktop and web UI clients in this case:

• Desktop. For WinForms xtraGrid and Combobox in "server" mode you provide only WCF or ODATA web services implementations. WCF is out of question as is not supported, ODATA - is too complicated just for read only operations.
• Web. Grid and Combobox have "virtual" mode, where CustomData event together with DevExtreme.AspNet.Data package are providing a elegant way to pass DataSourceLoadOptions to web service, convert it using EF or XPO to database queries and revert back a result.

So, just to get a list of orders from web service, the same logic has to be implemented twice, using totally different approaches for different UI clients. That is too complicated to implement and support, especially in huge enterprise software.
We would like to have one web service method "GetOrders" which could be reused by any UI client. As for me, I like the way how it is implemented using DevExtreme.AspNet.Data package.

Now why gRPC:
- Much more faster.
- Due to code generation, much more developer friendly. No needs for external packages, like nswag to generate clients.
- Easy to share *.proto file between projects/solutions
- Is a part of .net. Recommended by Microsoft.

Suggestion: Provide a easy way to implement gRPC web service method, which could be used to get data for any your control (Desktop or Web) in "server/virtual" mode.

Hope I was able to explain problems we are facing in a clear way.
Regards, Konstantin

Thank you for your awesome clarification, Konstantin!

Dear DevExpress team,

I am highly interested in gRPC service support as well. The main "driver" for me is performance in a scenario in which a Blazor WASM client needs to fetch lots of data in a DX Grid to then further process the data on the client side (data manipulations, data export to CSV, etc.).

I understand that one can use WebAPI as well and there are capabilities that help "dealing" with large data sets. However, the actual data retrieval via gRPC can be much faster compared to WebAPi.

Best regards,
Alex