Wednesday, April 12, 2006
LINQ

LINQ stands for "Language Integrated Query" and is a new feature that will be available in .NET 3.0 ("Orcas"). FoxPro developers can envision LINQ very similar to the FoxPro DML (Data Manipulation Language). Think "SELECT commands in C#/VB.NET" and you are right on the money. Of course, one of the big differences between .NET and VFP is that .NET does not differentiate between data and objects. This means that in LINQ, SELECT commands run against all kinds of sources, including lists of objects and XML documents. (And of course regular data).

I recently had an article about LINQ in CoDe Magazine. The article can be read online at the CoDe Magazine site as well as on VFPConversion.com:

• http://www.vfpconversion.com/Article.aspx?quickid=0603021
• http://www.code-magazine.com/Article.aspx?quickid=0603021

There also are a few shorter articles on LINQ on this site:

• http://www.vfpconversion.com/Article.aspx?quickid=050133
• http://www.vfpconversion.com/Article.aspx?quickid=0511121

Another interesting article that discusses LINQ's XML support (also known as "XLINQ") can be found at this URL:

• http://research.microsoft.com/~emeijer/Papers/PlanXDemo.pdf

LINQ is a very interesting technology, especially for VFP developers. After all LINQ introduces features that remove many of the .NET pain points for VFP developers. Looking at LINQ, it is obvious that much of the VFP spirit went into LINQ. Some even say this could be considered to be VFP 10. I am not sure that I would go quite that far, although those people do have a point...