Data control in asp.net

Supported Funcationalities
Control	Paging	Data Grouping	Provide Flexible Layout	Update,Delete	Insert	Sorting
ListView	supported	supported	supported	supported	supported	supported
GridView	supported	Not supported	Not Supported	supported	Not Supported	supported
DataList	Not supported	supported	supported	Not supported	Not supported	Not supported
Repeater	Not supported	Not supported	supported	Not supported	Not supported	Not supported

* Supported: means that it's provided out of the box without any custom code or hacks.

* Not Supported: means that it's not provided out of the box by the control but it could be possible to implement it using custom code \ hacks.

The GridView : it supports paging but it doesn't provide a flexible layout , since its mainly used to display the data in a table based layout.And If we looked at data inserting , the Gridview doesn't have a built in support for inserting data( since it doesn't call the insert method of it underlying data source when you click on a button with a CommadName set to "Insert" ).

The DataList : it support data grouping ( through its RepeatColumns property) , but it doesn't have a built in support for paging,inserting ,deleting , updating the data. and if you looked at its laout , you will find that by default  the datalist renders as html table and you will have to set its flowLayout to "Flow" to stop that behaviour.

The Repeater control : you will find that it provides a flexible layout but it doesn't support data grouping ,inserting,deleting , updating  and paging through the data .

Summary :

The ListView control was added to provide a rich data control that can support all the required functionalities at the same time , so now you can easily display a fully customizable layout that supports Grouping,paging , inserting , deleting , updating and sorting the data.