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[QUOTE="jmcilhinney, post: 167586, member: 641"]
You can use any object that implements the IList or IListSource interface as the data source for a DataGridView.  That's a lot of different types of objects.  In order for the data in the data source to be able to be sorted, the object must also implement the IBindingList interface.  It's that interface that provides knowledge of data-binding to the list.  The List(Of T) class implements IList but not IBindingList, therefore it doesn't support sorting via a bound control.  The BindingList(Of T) class does implement the IBindingList interface, although it doesn't provide a default implementation for sorting.  You can inherit BindingList(Of T) and provide your own implementation for sorting your own item type and then use an instance of that derived class as the data source for your grid.

Alternatively, you can put your data into a DataTable.  The DataTable class implements the IListSource interface and its GetList method returns a DataView, which implements IList, IBindingList and, for advanced sorting and filtering, IBindingListView.  The DataView class does provide a default implementation for sorting so you don't have to.  The DataTable/DataView is not strongly-typed to your data though, so you do lose something in order to get that general-purpose sorting.
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