Q:

Is it normal for Page_Load to trigger upon clicking a page of a GridView inside an UpdatePanel?

I have this code in my aspx page:
<form id="form2" runat="server">
  <asp:ScriptManager ID="ItemsScriptManager" runat="server" EnablePartialRendering="true" />
  <asp:Button runat="server" ID="SearchButton" OnClick="ItemsSearch" Text="Search" />
  <asp:UpdatePanel runat="server" ID="ItemsUpdatePanel">
    <ContentTemplate>
      <asp:ObjectDataSource runat="server" ID="ItemsDS"
        TypeName="TemplateGridViewODSPagingSorting.ItemDAO" SelectMethod="GetItems" />
      <asp:GridView runat="server" ID="ItemsGridView" DataSourceID="ItemsDS"
        AllowPaging="true" AllowSorting="true" PageSize="4">
      </asp:GridView>
    </ContentTemplate>
  </asp:UpdatePanel>
</form>

By pressing on another page of the GridView the Page_Load is triggered, is this normal behavior for a partial postback?

A:

Partial rendering using UpdatePanel does not change or affect the whole Page life cycle in ASP.NET.
it's a small trick used to re-render only a certain region of the page in the browser (the UpdatePanel) but nothing else change, so yes, it's normal to see Page_Load and all other events to be triggered as usual; it has to be like that or it would not work :)

