Trying to put the presentation in the application instead of in SQL is the best approach. You're never going to get everything all nicely lined up in .NET GridView if it's all in one returned column because your probably using a true-type font in your presentation. I've found it best to return individual fields in your DataTable to the page and then let it handle the presentation.

In your .NET application, you can format the output however you want. In your GridView, instead of using a BoundField, try using a TemplateField and embedding HTML between your child controls. You can probably get it laid out the way you want by using minimal CSS and

tags.

If automated pagination isn't an issue, then another option would be to switch to a Repeater control instead, where you can have a greater level of control over the output.