Part I - LINQ

Overview:

LINQ stands for Language-Integrated Query

LINQ address the current database development model in the context of Object Oriented Programming Model. If some one wants to develop database application on .Net platform the very simple approach he uses ADO.Net. ADO.Net is serving as middle ware in application and provides complete object oriented wrapper around the database SQL. Developing application in C# and VB.Net so developer must have good knowledge of object oriented concept as well as SQL, so it means developer must be familiar with both technologies to develop an application.

LINQ has a great power of querying on any source of data, data source could be the collections of objects, database or XML files. We can easily retrieve data from any object that implements the IEnumerable<T> interface. Microsoft basically divides LINQ into three areas and that are give below.

• LINQ to Object {Queries performed against the in-memory data}
• LINQ to ADO.Net
• LINQ to SQL (formerly DLinq) {Queries performed against the relation database only Microsoft SQL Server Supported}
• LINQ to DataSet {Supports queries by using ADO.NET data sets and data tables}
• LINQ to Entities {Microsoft ORM solution}
• LINQ to XML (formerly XLinq) { Queries performed against the XML source}

LINQ provides a layer of programming abstraction between .NET languages and an ever-growing number of underlying data sources.

LINQ to Object support querying against any object that inherits from IEnumerable (all .Net collection inherits from IEnumerable interface). LINQ to Object provided main types of Operator Type that are give below:

Operator Types	Operator Name
Aggregation	Aggregate Average Count LongCount, Max, Min, Sum
Conversion	Cast, OfType, ToArray, ToDictionary, ToList, ToLookup, ToSequence
Element	DefaultIfEmpty, ElementAt, ElementAtOrDefault, First, FirstOrDefault, Last, LastOrDefault, Single, SingleOrDefault
Equality	EqualAll
Generation	Empty, Range, Repeat
Grouping	GroupBy
Joining	GroupJoin, Join
Ordering	OrderBy, ThenBy, OrderByDescending, ThenByDescending, Reverse
Partitioning	Skip, SkipWhile,  Take,  TakeWhile
Quantifiers	All, Any, Contains
Restriction	Where
Selection	Select, SelectMany
Set	Concat, Distinct, Except, Intersect, Union

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