John P. Puopolo said
This is a very good introductory text to LINQ.
What I especially liked was that authors dedicated some time to nomenclature, which many other books simply omit. After establishing a solid foundation, the authors provide a digestible balance of depth and pragmatism. This is actually the third book I've read on LINQ, and wish it had been the first. While some of the other books go into technical minutiae, and may serve as comprehensive references, I think this book does a better job at explaining what LINQ is, how it works (to sufficient but not excruciating depth), and how to use it for the common business cases most of us are likely to encounter.
If you're about to learn LINQ, or have questions about some of the basics, consider reading this book.
Ian Marteens said
Unless you're absolutely new to LINQ, this is not the book you're looking for. It spends undeserved space explaining LINQ to SQL, a technology already deemed as obsolete by the own Microsoft. And there's practically no content on the Entity Framework, which right now seems the path recommended by Microsoft.
On the other hand, you'll find a lot of "funny" details, as a six page table listing key bindings in Visual Studio 2008... that is, a very cheap trick for making a longer book.
Noel Rice said
Charlie and Dinesh boil LINQ down to its essense; everything you need to know about LINQ without fluff. The progression of information is excellent, building in a carefully crafted sequence from the basic to the complex. Expect the "light bulb" to turn on many times while you're reading this.
Alain Tadros said
The quality of this book is very high in technical content and style of writing. I believe Charlie and Dinesh did an excellent job in telling the story of LINQ, why it was needed and how to use it efficiently. This book should be on every .NET developer's desk. Thank you Charlie for making yet another excellent book! The LINQ to SQL chapters are great, so as the XML ones as well.
W Boudville said
Linq is an interesting new capability added to C#, according to the book. It extends the ability of C# and .NET to access data. Eventually, other languages supported by .NET can be expected to have Linq.
The problem is the impedance mismatch between any object oriented language and a relational database. In Java, Hibernate addresses this issue. Linq is the C# analog. But Linq goes further in some ways, by letting queries to XML data and to sets of C# classes be written in the same manner as for querying SQL. This unified notation can ease the programmer's job. Though perhaps it should be said, since the book doesn't seem to do so, that the impedance mismatch between OO and XML or a set of classes within the OO language is fairly minimal. Reading in XML from a file gives data that is [often] inherently a set of objects. While if you have a set of object classes within an OO language, then surely there is no mismatch. Which is why these haven't been big issues within java or C++. Granted, the unified notation of Linq is still handy to support all 3 cases.
The practical reality is that most data is stored in SQL, and the book devotes 4 chapters to explaining Linq to SQL. If you are going to use Linq, it's these chapters you need.
Another advantage of Linq is in the declarative nature of the queries. At least in spirit this mimics SQL. More to the point, it frees up some of the burden from the programmer, by reducing the amount of imperative code she has to write. Which also reduces the chances of bugs in that code.
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