Two sample chapters of my Programming Microsoft LINQ book are finally available. Links to download pages in the chapters title.

Chapter 6 – Tools for LINQ to SQL

In this chapter, we took a look at the tools that are available to generate LINQ to SQL entities and DataContext classes. The .NET Framework SDK includes the command-line tool named SQLMetal. Visual Studio 2008 has a graphical editor known as the Object Relational Designer. Both allow the creation of a DBML file, the generation of source code in C# and Visual Basic, and the creation of an external XML mapping file. The Object Relational Designer also allows you to edit an existing DBML file, dynamically importing existing tables, views, stored procedures, and user-defined functions from an existing SQL Server database.

Chapter 16 – LINQ and ASP.NET

This chapter showed you how to leverage the new features and controls available in ASP.NET 3.5 to develop data-enabled Web applications, using LINQ to SQL and LINQ in general. Consider that what you have seen is really useful for rapidly defining Web site prototypes and simple Web solutions. On the other hand, in enterprise-level solutions you will probably need at least one intermediate layer between the ASP.NET presentation layer and the data persistence one, represented by LINQ to SQL. In real enterprise solutions, you usually also need a business layer that abstracts all business logic, security policies, and validation rules from any kind of specific persistence layer. And you will probably have a Model-View-Controller or Model-View-Presenter pattern governing the UI. In this more complex scenario, chances are that the LinqDataSource control will be tied to entities collections more often than to LINQ to SQL results.

The following is the complete list of the chapters included in the book.

Programming Microsoft LINQ

  • Part I LINQ FOUNDATIONS
    • 1 LINQ Introduction
    • 2 LINQ Syntax Fundamentals
    • 3 LINQ to Objects
  • Part II LINQ to Relational Data
    • 4 LINQ to SQL: Querying Data
    • 5 LINQ to SQL: Managing Data
    • 6 Tools for LINQ to SQL
    • 7 LINQ to DataSet
    • 8 LINQ to Entities
  • Part III LINQ and XML
    • 9 LINQ to XML: Managing the XML Infoset
    • 10 LINQ to XML: Querying Nodes
  • Part IV Advanced LINQ
    • 11 Inside Expression Trees
    • 12 Extending LINQ
    • 13 Parallel LINQ
    • 14 Other LINQ Implementations
  • Part V Applied LINQ
    • 15 LINQ in a Multitier Solution
    • 16 LINQ and ASP.NET
    • 17 LINQ and WPF/Silverlight
    • 18 LINQ and the Windows Communication Foundation
  • Appendixes
    • A ADO.NET Entity Framework
    • B C# 3.0: New Language Features
    • C Visual Basic 2008: New Language Features