Most of what you mentioned can be accomplished by handling the ItemCreated or ItemDataBound events of the DataGrid/Gridview, etc. You might also want to consider using a DataList/ListView control where you can get away from the X by Y grid look.  Many times you can also create a formatting function of public scope that can be called from with a databinding expression.

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Bill, WESNet Designs
Team Lead - DotNetNuke Gallery Module Project (Not Actively Being Developed)
Extensions Forge Projects . . .
Current: UserExport, ContentDeJour, ePrayer, DNN NewsTicker, By Invitation
Coming Soon: FRBO-For Rent By Owner

I've been digging into both the gridview and the repeater, both of which show some promise, but I'm not sure if they show enough. 

The problem I'm seeing at this point is that, if the group which the current record is a part of (let's say that thats column 0 in the returned dataset), then I need to display a new header row which will span the width of the table). 

So, for example

Group 1
Name A        link A1    link A2     link A3
Name B        link B1   link B2     link B3
Group 2       
Name C        link C1    link C2   link C3
Name D        link D1    link D2   link D3
Name E        link E1     link E2   link E3
Group 3
Name F        link F1      link F2   link F3
Name G        link G1     link G2  link G3

The group name is actually returned in each row from the stored proc (first column).  If its different that the one above (or different than a blank value for the first record, then it needs to be it's own row in the output display.  I considered using the data repeater for this, as I could simply make a horizontal template for it but I'm not sure if this is a viable solution or not...

The Alternating record function will allow me to alter the background colors of each row, so thats useful, but I would also like to have it reset after each group change.  Again, with a table output, I had this all licked, but as I try to bring it into DNN, I'm not having the greatest of luck. 

The links will be mostly static, with only the last section of each link being dynamic based off the record value, again, easy to do the way I was doing it... Now... I'm still puzzling this out...

BTW, I'm using SQL 2005, with VS 2005 and the 2.0 framework,   If this is solvable with VS2008, I think I can get the upgrade approved.

It's annoying that alot of what I'm finding is CLOSE, but not quite there...

Why isn't there some kind of just straight HTML rendering control for DNN where you can just build the html code string and then set some property of said control (ie control.text =  strTableCodeToOutput)

Brian