Programming Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012

Language-Integrated Query (LINQ)

The expressiveness and flexibility of language-integrated query (LINQ), first introduced with .NET 3.5, brought radical change to the way developers program in C# and Visual Basic (VB) .NET. That’s a bold statement, but don’t misinterpret it to mean that LINQ is always the answer. There are many implementations of LINQ, and we will soon be examining many factors that you need to consider before determining which ones are the right (or wrong) choices for your application. But all LINQ implementations ultimately rest on top of LINQ to Objects, and LINQ to Objects is always the right choice when working with objects. This means that—at the very least—you should be using LINQ instead of writing loops wherever possible ...