Exact difference in between Ajaxsource and Serverside & issue with MVC view model

hi

<Warning!! - Long post>

I was wondering on the actual difference (in implementation terms) between Ajax source and Server side processing.
Every single one of the many examples for Datatables that use Ajax as source i.e. ("sAjaxSource"=getDataURL), also use "bServerSide"=true?

Does this mean if you are getting the data from the server via Ajax using sAjaxSource call to a database, the Server HAS to provide all the implementation for paging sorting etc etc?
This therefore means Ajax source w/out server call is purely to access simple data in Datatable array format from a text file (for e.g.)?

Possibly I have something mixed up here - the reason for asking the above is that I need to populate a datatable from a ASP.NET MVC4 View Model using simple HTML rendered directly from Controller, and would like to retain the client side functionality for sorting etc as its 'already there' :). i.e. the 'push' rather than 'pull' model.

In addition I need Editor plugin CRUD functionality on the grid along with a postback to the Controller for POST processing.
I have looked at a large number of examples for this functionality and all of them implement server side methods for datatable processing and Ajax calls e.g. http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/155422/, which is fine I guess if you have lots of records to process which i don't.

I am using the following link as a reference for the View model binding to Editor area:
http://datatables.net/forums/discussion/10877/mvc3-using-datatable-and-editor
This works well (upto a point) - there are issues with how the Editor plugin field mappings "reads" the rendered HTML hence the selected row values do not appear in the popup when editing a row.

Details:
The HTML rendered by the MVC view is as follows : (using MVC EditorFor)

<input id="VMObjectName_0__FieldName" name="ModelObject[0].FieldName"

e.g.

<input id="productViewModel_0__ProductCode" name="productViewModel[0].ProductCode"

I am guessing that the above HTML cannot be read accurately by Editor field mapping that currently says :

                            "label": "ProductCode:",
                            "name": "ProductCode"

Although, the datatable rendering works beautifully as per my Test Case here:http://live.datatables.net/unator/8
(editor component commented out)

The data binding for HTML as suggested in the documentation (i.e. "name": 0, etc) would not work for me as the postback needs to bind to a MVC VM object so sending back an array as "data.3" etc would not work long term.

What I mean is when I set up like this as per the documentation-

                        {
                            "label": "ProductCode:",
                            "name": 3
                        }

Data is posted back on update, however following issues exist:

A) On the Edit popup dialog, the text box for the edited field above has the entire HTML string e.g.

 <input id="SurveyDataViewModel_1__ProductCode" name="SurveyDataViewModel[1].ProductCode" value="AAB.CDS.OFF.001" type="text">

B) Data is posted back in the JSON data object as -

data.3=%3Cinput+id%3D%22SurveyDataViewModel_1__ProductCode%22+name%3D%22SurveyDataViewModel%5B1%5D.ProductCode%22+value%3D%22AAB.CDS.OFF.001%22+type%3D%22text%22%3E

C) Mapped fields in the returned object are null (obviously)

D) Id value is null, altho not sure if the way I am doing it is correct i.e. using "idSrc" property.

editor = new $.fn.dataTable.Editor({
            "ajaxUrl": "/Manufacturer/SubmitSurveyDataChanges",
            "domTable": "#dTManufactSurveyData",
            "idSrc": "DataRecordId",
...
     $('#dTManufactSurveyData').dataTable({
            "sDom": "Tfrtip",
...other DT options...
            "aoColumns": [
                        { "sName": "DataRecordId",
                            "bSearchable": false,
                            "bVisible": false
                        },

From the above I guess my options are -

1) Parse the returned data.JSON string for the hardcoded ("name":Index) columns so as to retrieve them in data.FieldName="value" format using the onPreSubmit event.
This is doable I guess, but introduces an element of hard coding / manual processing that I'd like to avoid long term.

2) attempt to change the rendered HTML from MVC VM so that the HTML is rendered as per the documentation i.e.

<input id="ProductCode" name="ProductCode" type="text" value="AAB.CDS.OFF.001" />

I have tried this and does not work i.e. I still get the mapped field with the HTML string as per point A) above.
Also, given that the MVC Razor rendering is quite inflexible especially for name and id fields this is probably not doable..

3) Change the population of the datatable from DOM source to Ajax source, which seems to mean that all Data table functions need to be implemented Server side (is this correct?)
This is also doable but not sure if it will address the issues, possibly it will since data will be returned to DT in the required JSON format and hence mapping should be easier for Editor?
However this means the structure of my ViewModel rendering needs to change plus all DT functions need to be coded which is significant effort.

I do understand and totally get that this is a very long post and possibly too complex for a free customer to request!.
If however you can provide some broad hints whether/how the solution I am proposing is possible to achieve, I would be only to happy to purchase support to get this resolved. I am very interested in using DT as I can see it totally fitting in with our architecture however I need some of these complex use cases clarified!

If you need further details on HTML DOM issue I am happy to provide, as mentioned I did try to set up on the test site as suggested.

On a side note, I must also congratulate you on an excellent implementation for this plugin, I am evaluating a number of plugins for grid functionality for our company web sites and Data tables is the best of the lot - even if I end up having to use something else I'll continue keeping an eye out for the upcoming ASP.NET MVC integration which I believe is in the works.

Thanks for your patience (if you read this far :))