Are they ever going to make ObjectDataSource worthwhile?

The current "stateless" design of ObjectDataSource when using the DataObjectTypeName is not viable for use in modern Ajax-driven applications. Since the ObjectDataSource creates a new object on every postback, there is no way to persist between call-backs any changes made by other previous postbacks without committing the infomation to the datastore.

Previously proposed "solutions" like not using DataObjectTypes are unacceptible due to the coupling of the view to the needed Insert/Update/Delete methods.

Microsoft should allow ObjectDataSource to have "acquire" symantics when handling postbacks, so that it can get the object instance being manipulated from the session store (whereever that is). Then ObjectDataSource/GridView/etc. can set the just properties bound on that specific view.

The easiest implementation would be to call an Acquire method (parameterized with the declare key values) and use that object. This would be an overridable method that could in the base implementation simply do the current behavior of an ex-nilo call to the DataObjectType's default constructor. In derived classes, we can offer whatever symantics we need (including cache, session, ORM, or web-service based object acquisition).

Of course we could do this ourselves using a derived ObjectDataSource and ObjectDataSourceView, except they didn't do the implementation of that correctly in the framework. ObjectDataSource never calls the derived-classes GetView(String) method. If they simply fixed that so that ObjectDataSource's GetView() method called GetView(String.Empty), I could do it myself.

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