Eric White wrote a blog entry asking whether developers are using Language Integrated Query (LINQ). I have to confess that I had heard about LINQ. But I was definitely not using it either on the job or in my side projects. So I thought I would delve a little deeper, and summarize some of the points brought up by Eric and those that commented on his post.To start with, LINQ is an extension to the .NET framework. It extends the C# and VB languages. LINQ comes with Visual Studio 2008. It allows the developer to express query behavior efficiently. Essentially it makes SQL a part of the programming language. It addresses the database model in the context of Object Oriented Programming.
Now let's review some of the bad thing about LINQ. Not a lot of people understand it. Once again I will confess that I am no LINQ expert myself. Although I am now trying to learn more about at a high level. I heard that it is difficult to debug LINQ statements. And finally LINQ has performance issues when returning a large list of objects.
For every bad thing about LINQ, there is a good side too. Programs written using LINQ tend to have fewer bugs. It works well with C#. And for those who have delved into it, they say it provides a good return on investment. In other words you will benefit greatly if you put a little work into learning LINQ.
It takes about a week to get the hang of LINQ basics. And it will take closer to a month to get to a deeper knowledge of the technology. When LINQ is coded on top of stored procedures, it makes for simpler code. Finally I have been guided to use IEnumerable extension methods but not the pseudo SQL syntax. Well I do not know enough about LINQ to qualify the last statement fully. But I may just dive in and try to my bearings so I can at least evaluate the technologies.
