Professional ADO.NET 3.5 with LINQ and the Entity Framework

Introduction

Language Integrated Query (LINQ), as well as the C# 3.0 and VB 9.0 language extensions to support it, is the most import single new feature of Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.x. LINQ is Microsoft's first attempt to define a universal query language for a diverse set of in-memory collections of generic objects, entities persisted in relational database tables, and element and attributes of XML documents or fragments, as well as a wide variety of other data types, such as RSS and Atom syndication feeds. Microsoft invested millions of dollars in Anders Hejlsberg and his C# design and development groups to add new features to C# 3.0 — such as lambda expressions, anonymous types, and extension methods — specifically to support LINQ Standard Query Operators (SQOs) and query expressions as a part of the language itself.

Corresponding additions to VB 9.0 followed the C# team's lead, but VB's implementation of LINQ to XML offers a remarkable new addition to the language: XML literals. VB's LINQ to XML implementation includes XML literals, which treat well-formed XML documents or fragments as part of the VB language, rather than requiring translation of element and attribute names and values from strings to XML DOM nodes and values.

This book concentrates on hands-on development of practical Windows and Web applications that demonstrate C# and VB programming techniques to bring you up to speed on LINQ technologies. The first half of the book covers SQOs and the concrete ...