The way we want to support labeling in our app is on-the-fly, meaning that the user can define what fields are displayed and other options, so I don't think the approach of having the labels be defined in ArcMap will work for us. We don't want the user switching between our app and ArcMap, since that will be a pain for them.
By the way, I tried handling the Updated event on the layer, to label features on demand, but when I do a Query inside that event, I'm still only getting the first 1000. The features that are newly visible are not returned, and thus labels are not placed on them.
Also, I've been looking for a sample of using JoinDataSource and haven't been able to find one. Do you have one?
Thanks,
George
EDIT: I posted this before I saw your second response. I will look at that further, thanks!