I'm working on replacing an existing web grid in an ASP.NET web application, with a new implementation. The existing grid is powerful, but not flexible enough. It also brings with it all kind of frameworks we don't like to have on our web pages.

While looking into existing options I noticed I can break the available solutions into two main approaches. The older approach is represented best by the ASP.NET GridView. This is a classic ASP.NET control that generates the needed HTML on the server, based on a given set of data. The newer approach is depending on client side rendering, mainly with jQuery. A good example would be jqGrid. Only the data is sent to the client (Usually with JSON or XML)

In the GridView case, if I want an AJAX behavior, I would have to implement it with something like an update panel.

• Is there a definitive choice I should make?
• Is there a good chance of achieving the same snappy behavior I get with jqGrid (even with many records), with server side rendered controls?
• Is there some hybrid implementation incorporating both approaches?