Found myself wanting to use jqGrid and being annoyed that all the quickstarts and examples were in php/mysql and found the default method of accessing soap endpoints exciting not so much.
So here is my solution,
http://skysanders.net/jqgridws/,.
The query engine supports paging/sorting and filtering ( only one term currently) over any table in your database without writing any data access code. Just knock out some simple lightweight DTO objects shaped like your tables and away you go.
Anyway - check it out and let me know what you think.