LINQ to SQL and the ADO.NET Entity Framework: ORM Comes to .NET

We’ll return to LINQ queries in a moment, but now it’s time to focus on building models. While it is useful to compare LINQ itself to SQL and C# in order to better understand it, understanding a LINQ to SQL or Entity Framework (shortened to L2S and EF for the remainder of this discussion) model, and the corresponding designers, can be nicely accomplished by a comparison with a typed DataSet and the typed DataSet designer.

Our typed DataSet contained a model of a subset of our database and resulted in the generation of strongly typed classes to represent that DataSet and its DataTable and TableAdapter objects. L2S and EF models serve a similar purpose and produce similar results. Our ...

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