When Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta was released it was hinted that new data binding functionality would be available for WPF applications using a new BindingGroup class.

Well with the release of SP1 RTM the BindingGroup surfaces – no longer such a well guarded secret. On the other hand it hasn’t exactly been promoted as a key new feature? I’ve yet to find a mention of it aside from the original reference by Brad Abrams.

I’ve only taken a quick glance thus far – but what I’ve seem looks promising. I was hoping for a method to overcome the clumsy “find a bound control” hack, but couldn’t find it. However, it does provide a BindingExpressions collection which provides an easy mechanism to identify all bindings for a given FrameworkElement (including all its children). Well – for those that care – here’s the MSDN documentation for BindingGroup.

Also of interest, but swamped by the SP1 RTM headlines a CTP for the forthcoming WPF DataGrid!

UPDATE: Vincent Sibal explains BindingGroup in full.