LINQ For Dummies®

Chapter 5. Working with LINQ in Visual Studio 2005

In This Chapter

• Getting LINQ for Visual Studio 2005

• Adding LINQ support to Visual Studio 2005

• Developing your first Visual Studio 2005 LINQ project

Although LINQ support comes with Visual Studio 2008, you won't find it natively in Visual Studio 2005. Yes, you can definitely use LINQ in your Visual Studio 2005 applications, but you'll end up working a bit harder to get it because you must download and install the required support. Even after you install the required support, you'll find that Visual Studio 2005 lacks the automation found in Visual Studio 2008. Consequently, writing a LINQ application in Visual Studio 2005 is a little more work than writing the same application in Visual Studio 2008.

Tip

Discovering how LINQ works in Visual Studio 2005 has some benefits if you want to see LINQ in action. Because you have to do more of the work, you'll uncover some issues that the Visual Studio 2008 automation tends to hide. Therefore, if you have the time, you should try working with Visual Studio 2005 even if you plan to do most of your development in Visual Studio 2008.

This chapter begins with a look at a simple LINQ application in Visual Studio 2005 so that you can compare development to the simple Visual Studio 2008 examples in Chapters 2 and 3. The chapter then progresses to common LINQ scenarios, including objects, DataSets, XML, and SQL Server. Understanding how these providers function in Visual Studio 2005 is helpful in understanding ...