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Trying to wrap my head around PCF Controls .. some questions

So we're going from on prem to online very soon, and I'm trying to learn more about PCF Controls. I've seen where Node.JS is required, yet I see many who also use React JS. Is Node.JS baked in yet some can choose to use React or other frameworks as needed? We will probably need to heavily depend on PCF Controls for customizations, so I really want to learn this. Catch is I know very little about Javascript. Most of my experience to date with CRM/D365 is interacting with it through SDK with C# through plugins and so forth. This has mostly been in the background, but we do foresee lots of new UI changes as we go online. Example we need a custom search where we create a custom form users fill out search criteria and a grid at the bottom will return results. It's my goal to write something like this, but I don't really know where to start. Node JS seems to have some grids I can use, but I'm still fuzzy on where to start.

Also I've read that PCF Controls use CDS to get data which works, but I will need to put lots of logic into what gets pulled back. I just haven't seen many examples with PCF Controls with lots of coding -- most seems to be focused on what to display on screen. So if I need to fetch data from multiple entities (or tables I guess they're called now) then merge them or exclude some data then add fields before presenting on the grid -- I can't find where something like this would be done on a PCF control.

Thanks.

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