I wanted to show the number of listings in a particular category. After some research and reading Scott Mitchell's book ASP.NET Data Web Controls, I came up with the following solution.
Code behind page under the Page_Load event
Dim cnn As New SqlConnection
cnn.ConnectionString = _
"Data Source =
yourDataSource;" & _
"Initial Catalog =
yourDatabase;" & _
"Integrated Security = SSPI"
Dim da As SqlDataAdapter
da = New SqlDataadapter(
SELECT category, COUNT(*)
FROM myTable
GROUP BY Category ", cnn)
Dim ds As New DataSet
da.Fill(ds,"Category")
dlCategory.DataSource = ds
DataBind()
Then on the html page
<asp:DataList ID="dlCategory" runat="server">
<itemTemplate>
<a href ='Categories.aspx?cat=<%# Eval("catergory") %>'>
<%# Eval("category") %>
<%# Eval("categoryCount") %></a>
</itemTemplate>
</asp:DataList>
And so now if you look under the categories column on the right a count is displayed against each of my categories. All that remains for me to do now is an Archive and the Search