C# in Depth

Chapter 12. LINQ beyond collections

This chapter covers

• LINQ to SQL

• Building providers with IQueryable

• LINQ to DataSet

• LINQ to XML

• Third party-LINQ

• Future Microsoft LINQ technologies

In the previous chapter, we saw how LINQ to Objects works, with the C#3 compiler translating query expressions into normal C# code, which for LINQ to Objects just happens to call the extension methods present in the Enumerable class. Even without any other features, query expressions would have been useful for manipulating data in memory. It probably wouldn’t have been worth the extra complexity in the language, though. In reality, LINQ to Objects is just one aspect of the big picture.

In this chapter we’ll take a whirlwind tour of other LINQ providers and APIs. First we’ll ...