Essential LINQ

Chapter 1. Introduction

Welcome to Essential LINQ. This book was written by two managers from the Microsoft C# team. One is the Program Manager who guided the design and development of LINQ to SQL, and the other worked daily with the engineers, testers, and designers who built LINQ to SQL and LINQ to Objects. All the key ideas in this book were vetted with the designers of LINQ and reflect the current best practices for LINQ development.

LINQ is an acronym for Language Integrated Query. It is pronounced “link.” You may sometimes hear it pronounced “lin-queue,” but that is incorrect.

LINQ introduces querying into the C# language as a first-class citizen. The compiler type checks LINQ queries. Inside Visual Studio LINQ queries are syntax-highlighted ...