Why LINQ?
With LINQ, you can use the same syntax to retrieve data from any data source:
var query = from e in employees where e.id == 1 select e.name
This is not pseudocode; this is LINQ syntax, and it's very similar to SQL. The LINQ team's goal was not to add yet another way to access data, but to provide a native, integrated set of instructions to query any kind of data source. Using C# keywords, we can write data access code as part of C#, and the C# compiler will be able to enforce type safety and even logical consistency. LINQ provides a rich set of instructions to implement complex queries that support data aggregation, joins, sorting, and much more.
Figure 1 presents an overview of LINQ functionality. The top level shows the languages ...
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