LINQ for Visual C# 2008

Why LINQ?

With LINQ, you can use the same syntax to retrieve data from any data source:

var query = from e in employees
				where e.id == 1
				select e.name

This is not pseudocode; this is LINQ syntax, and it's very similar to SQL. The LINQ team's goal was not to add yet another way to access data, but to provide a native, integrated set of instructions to query any kind of data source. Using C# keywords, we can write data access code as part of C#, and the C# compiler will be able to enforce type safety and even logical consistency. LINQ provides a rich set of instructions to implement complex queries that support data aggregation, joins, sorting, and much more.

Figure 1 presents an overview of LINQ functionality. The top level shows the languages ...