Hello Mariano,
Straight to questions:
1. I would suggest you to use the requestEnd event of the DataSource in order to check how many items are returned from the server. Please refer to the http://dojo.telerik.com/IkuhU example.
2. I am not sure that I understand the problem you are facing. Please refer to this http://dojo.telerik.com/aPuni example that demonstrates how to make the ComboBox widget a custom editor for Category column. Once a new value is selected the model value is changed properly.
3. Could you please replicate a problem with the example from point 2?
Regards,Boyan Dimitrov
Telerik
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