LINQ Scenario

[Kamal Gurnani]

In an enterprise application, what are the possible scenario to favour for LINQ to DataSet or LINQ to SQL as against ADO.NET? What would be the real gain of LINQ when used instead of ADO.NET technology?

[Eslam Afifi]

Using LINQ-to-DataSet is a lot easier than using GetChildRows, GetParentRow, GetParentRows ... methods (calling the relation using its name as string). LINQ-to-DataSet is just doing queries against the old, normal DataSet. LINQ gives you compile-time checking (strongly typed) instead of using SQL strings which the compiler doesn't check.* LINQ saves a lot of time and code (a simple LINQ query can save you for/foreach loops ...).* LINQ makes your code more readable and maintainable.* You can use the same LINQ query with different data sources (assuming they have the same member names or you'll have to do little modifications).* LINQ-to-SQL works only with SQL Server 2005 (and higher) while LINQ-to-Entities (Entity Framework) is more general and works with other databases as well. * Applies to LINQ in general.

Eslam Afifi