I'm working on a grid which supports editing multi dimensional data, basically under normal conditions a cell in the main grid will have a text description of how many values are contained in that cell, when you click on a cell an adorning editor pops that contains a datagrid with values. Alternatively there is UI that lets you filter the multi dimensional data down to a single value, in which case that value shows up in the cell in the main grid and you can edit it there. The number of columns and types of data aren't known until runtime.
I have gotten this all working but the main issue is my current approach is that right now when you filter it down to show a single value in a cell it regenerates the field layout and rebinds everything, which is going fairly slow on some relatively small grids(less than 50 columns x 100 rows). Is it possible to change the change the field settings on a column without having to completly change the field layout and rebind the entire grid? I need to be able to change a field type from being a readonly string to being any number of custom editors.
It's hard to say based on what you described as to how exactly its working and what you are changing. It could be that you could have additional unbound fields that are normally hidden and you just change the visibility when you drill into it or if you need a different data source maybe you use 2 grid - one for the high level and one for the drilled into one. If you still have an issue then perhaps you should contact the support group and provide a sample that demonstrates the issue.
I started implementing this and it looks like it will work, basically I have a field of type object bound to the grid which can hold various types, I switched what kind of object is held internally and set the EditAsType on the field, I was able to dynamically change the field.Settings.EditorType to switch a column from showing a string to being able to edit a decimal without having to rebind everything