Professional ADO.NET 3.5 with LINQ and the Entity Framework

LINQ and the Entity Framework are revolutionizing .NET database programming. With this book as your guide, you'll discover how to leverage these cutting-edge query and object/relational mapping technologies for enterprise-class computing. It provides you with hands-on coding techniques for data-intensive web and Windows projects. You'll also get quickly up to speed on LINQ technologies with the help of C# and VB programming examples.

Leading Microsoft database authority Roger Jennings first covers LINQ Standard Query Operators (SQOs) and domain-specific LINQ to SQL, LINQ to DataSet, and LINQ to XML implementations for querying generic collections. He then delves into the ADO.NET Entity Framework, Entity Data Model, Entity SQL (eSQL), and LINQ to Entities. Numerous code examples are integrated throughout the chapters that emulate real-world data sources and show you how to develop C# and VB web site/application or Windows projects.

The information in this book will give you the tools to create and maintain applications that are independent of the underlying relational data.

What you will learn from this book

• A new approach to data access in ADO.NET 3.5 SP1
• Methods for working with advanced LINQ query operators and expressions
• Techniques for querying SQL Server® database with LINQ to SQL
• Approaches for integrating third-party and emerging LINQ implementations
• How to raise the level of data abstraction with the Entity Data Model
• Steps for creating design-time data sources from ObjectContext
• Ways to use the Entity Data Model as a data source

Who this book is for

This book is for intermediate to advanced developers of data-intensive .NET web- and Windows-based applications.

About the Author

Roger Jennings is an author and consultant specializing in Microsoft .NET n-tier and client/server database applications and data-intensive Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Web services. He's been a beta tester for all versions of Visual Basic and Visual Studio, starting with the Professional Extensions for Visual Basic 2.0 (code named Rawhide).

More than 1.25 million copies of Roger's 25 computer-oriented books are in print, and they have been translated into more than 20 languages. He's the author of Expert One-on-One Visual Basic 2005 Database Programming for Wiley/WROX, three editions of Database Developer's Guide to Visual Basic (SAMS Publishing), two editions of Access Developer's Guide (SAMS), 11 editions of Special Edition Using Microsoft Access (QUE Publishing), and two editions of Special Edition Using Windows NT 4.0 Server (QUE). He 's also written developer-oriented books about Windows 3.1 multimedia, Windows 95, Windows 2000 Server, Active Directory Group Policy, Visual Basic Web services, and Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 SP-1. Roger has been a contributing editor of Redmond Media Group's Visual Studio Magazine and its predecessor, Visual Basic Programmer 's Journal for almost 15 years. His articles also appear in Redmond Magazine and he writes "TechBriefs" and cover stories for Redmond Developer News.

Roger has more than 30 years of computer-related experience, beginning with real-time medial data acquisition and chemical process control systems driven by Wang 700 calculators and later Wang BASIC microcomputers. He is the principal developer for OakLeaf Systems, a Northern California software consulting firm and author of the OakLeaf Systems blog. His OakLeaf Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) ASP.NET Web service demonstration won the charter Microsoft .NET Best Award for Horizontal Solutions.