View Larger Image	Joseph C. Rattz Jr. Apress, Paperback, Published November 2007, 624 pages, ISBN 1590597893
	List Price: $44.99 Our Price: $27.50 You Save: $17.49 (39% Off)
	Availability: In-Stock

Read an excerpt: Chapter 1: Hello LINQ       Excerpt provided courtesy of Apress. Copyright © Apress, Inc. Written permission from the publisher is required for any use of this material.

Write a Review and tell the world about this title!

People who purchase this book frequently purchase:

• Pro C# 2008 and the .NET 3.5 Platform 4th Edition; Andrew Troelsen, $36.95, 38% Off!
• Pro ASP.NET 3.5 in C# 2008, 2nd Edition; Matthew MacDonald, et al, $36.95, 38% Off!
• Accelerated C# 2008; Trey Nash, $24.50, 39% Off!
• Pro WPF in C# 2008: Windows Presentation Foundation with .NET 3.5 Second Edition; Matthew MacDonald, $33.95, 38% Off!

• Programming Languages : C#
• Programming : .NET
• Programming : .NET 3.5
• Programming : Visual Studio 2008

• Apress

LINQ is the project name for a set of extensions to the .NET Framework that provide a generic approach to querying data from different data sources. LINQ will premier in Visual Studio 2008, and will become the next must-have skill for .NET developers. For more information about LINQ, you can check out the author's portal at www.linqdev.com.

Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008 is all about code.

Literally, this book starts with code and ends with code. In most books, the author shows the simplest example demonstrating how to use a method, but they so rarely show how to use the more complex prototypes. Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008 is different. Demonstrating the overwhelming majority of LINQ operators and protoypes, it is a veritable treasury of LINQ examples.

Rather than obscure the relevant LINQ principles in code examples by focusing on a demonstration application you have no interest in writing, Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008 cuts right to the chase of each LINQ operator, method, or class. However, where complexity is necessary to truly demonstrate an issue, the examples are right there in the thick of it. For example, code samples demonstrating how to handle concurrency conflicts actually create concurrency conflicts so you can step through the code and see them unfold.

Most books tell you about the simple stuff, while few books warn you of the pitfalls. Where Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008 returns your investment is in the hours, and sometimes days, spent by the author determining why something may not work as expected. Sometimes this results in an innocent looking paragraph that may take you a minute to read and understand, but took days to research and explain.

Face it, most technical books while informative, are dull. LINQ need not be dull. Written with a sense of humor, Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008 will attempt to entertain you on your journey through the wonderland of LINQ and C# 2008.

What you'll learn

• How to leverage all the new LINQ relevant C# 2008 language features including extension methods, lambda expressions, anonymous data types, and partial methods.
• How to use LINQ to Objects to query in-memory data collections such as arrays, ArrayLists, and Lists to retrieve the data you want.
• Why some queries are deferred, how a deferred query can bite you, and how you can make deferred queries work for you.
• How to use LINQ to XML to revolutionize your creation, manipulation, and searching of XML data.
• How to query DataSets with LINQ to DataSet so you can co-exist with legacy code and use LINQ to query databases other than SQL Server.
• How to query Databases with LINQ to SQL, write your own entity classes, and understand how to handle concurrency conflicts.

Who is this book for?

This book is written for the proficient C# developer, but you do not need to be up on all the latest C# features to understand the material. When you finish this book, you will be up on all the latest C# features.

About the Apress Pro Series

The Apress Pro series books are practical, professional tutorials to keep you on and moving up the professional ladder.

You have gotten the job, now you need to hone your skills in these tough competitive times. The Apress Pro series expands your skills and expertise in exactly the areas you need. Master the content of a Pro book, and you will always be able to get the job done in a professional development project. Written by experts in their field, Pro series books from Apress give you the hard-won solutions to problems you will face in your professional programming career.

About the Author

Joseph C. Rattz, Jr., unknowingly began his career in software development in 1990 when a friend asked him for assistance writing an ANSI text editor named ANSI Master for the Commodore Amiga. A hangman game (The Gallows) soon followed. From these compiled Basic programs, he moved on to programming in C for more speed and power. Joe then developed applications that were sold to JumpDisk, an Amiga disk magazine, as well as Amiga World magazine. Due to developing in a small town on a fairly isolated platform, Joe learned all the wrong ways to write code. It was while trying to upgrade his poorly written applications that he gained respect for the importance of easily maintainable code. It was love at first sight when Joe spotted a source-level debugger in use for the first time.

Two years later, Joe obtained his first software development opportunity at Policy Management Systems Corporation as an entry-level programmer developing a client/server insurance application for OS/2 and Presentation Manager. Through the years, he added C++, Unix, Java, ASP, ASP.NET, C#, HTML, DHTML, and XML to his skill set while developing applications for SCT, DocuCorp, IBM and the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, CheckFree, NCR, EDS, Delta Technology, Radiant Systems, and the Genuine Parts Company. Joe enjoys the creative aspects of user interface design, and he appreciates the discipline necessary for server-side development. But, given his druthers, his favorite development pastime is debugging code.

Joe can be found working for the Genuine Parts Company—the parent company of NAPA—in the Automotive Parts Group Information Systems department, where he works on his baby, the Storefront web site. This site for NAPA provides the stores a view into their accounts and data on a network of AS/400s.

Feb 1, 2008     Paschal from Ireland
Excellent book and well structured
LINQ is latest interesting tool to come from Microsoft, along with Silverlight, WPF and the Ajax toolkit. One of difficulties about these new technologies is that there is not enough documentation readily available. This book is the first one that has really captured my attention, maybe because it's the first one on the subject. Apress books are always a great buy, however in this instance, I reviewed the eBook version, which I have to say is not the easiest to navigate. I might be a cutting edge developer but I am also an old fashion type of guy, I like the feel and smell of new books! Anyway back to the subject, LINQ. I think we can all say we are newbies on the subject except for those who are familiar with ORM (Object Relation Mapping) technology. LINQ implementation is quite different than the other ORM tools and can be surprising in some ways sometimes for beginners. The author here has taken the broad option of covering LINQ for both beginners and professionals. It something I like a lot because it avoids the need for two books on the same subject, which often can mean you never quite find the right piece of code you are looking for. Kudos to the author who admits that this is his first book; I think he should continue writing. I would have no problem recommending another book by the same author . The introduction is a well written exercise, where the writer gets the reader's attention using some clever basic 'hello' messages coded with LINQ before he delves into a deeper understanding of the language. The style is straightforward, taking an honest approach. You won't find any pompous statements in the book saying something like 'I know what I am talking about, I was born with LINQ!', but instead you find a more frank admission that the author has also learned by writing on the subject himself. I am looking forward now to a VB version of the book, because this is the only negative comment I can make. It would have been easy to write the examples in VB and C# in the same book. I can code in both, but I know you have subtle differences. LINQ is not only for database gurus, and I like the fact that in the book the LINQ to SQL has been pushed further down the content list. What is also good is that because the book is well structured you can jump directly to any section. I would have added more diagrams and graphics to the text to lighten what is a heavy read. Another little thing but useful for the beginners would have been to have some explanations on using the LINQ designer class in Visual Studio 2008, which is quite absent as far as I could see. Now I do hope that my review will encourage you to buy this book because not only is it the first one on the subject, but because it covers almost everything you need to know on the subject.

Jan 18, 2008     Avi Wortzel
LINQ - is already here!
In the last few months I started to learn one of the great frameworks from Microsoft named LINQ. In order to get a better understand about the LINQ framework I read a lot from the official Microsoft documentation. I even shared people in my thoughts about the LINQ project (I focused on LINQ to SQL with its pervious name D-LINQ), in my blog.

After a while I took a time to read the "Pro LINQ" book. This book exposes me to some fundamentals in the LINQ world which I wasn't familiar with, and helped me to improve my knowledge in the LINQ world.

The LINQ framework is based on some new features from the new C# 3.0. Therefore this book brings a short briefing about these features, each one of them accompanied by good demonstration. Every chapter in this book is (almost) standing alone.

My favorite section in this book was the LINQ to SQL. It's the most powerful and interesting part in the LINQ Framework. The book starts this section with a small chapter that helps the readers to understand the basic terminology about all the LINQ to SQL components. The book contains all the detail about verity options to work with the LINQ to SQL in the real work. Furthermore, the book compares some of these methods and gives us the ability to choose the appropriate solutions based of your needs (like: Projecting into Entity Classes vs. Nonentity Classes, Using the SqlMetal command line or the Object Relational Designer, XML Mapping File Vs. DBML Intermediate File and etc). The book contains a lot of tips that really can help during the daily work. I'll mention the top 5 tips that can help you to implement LINQ to SQL in your application:

- How to support the legacy code.

- How to use the Data Context Logger.

- Take Advantage of Deferred Queries

- Consider Using Partial Classes or Mapping Files

- Consider Using Partial Methods.

While the book shows the ability of the auto generated sophisticated code, it gives good guidelines of how to write all this code in your own hands and a set of rules about the issues that you should be aware when you implement it by yourself.

I really re commend this book for all people that want to learn about LINQ from introduction to professional level.

Jan 8, 2008     J. Pease from Texas
LINQ: More than just an ORM
When I first heard someone describe LINQ, I thought "Oh, another ORM... that doesn't sound very exciting".

Upon further research I discovered that LINQ is actually quite a bit more than just "another ORM", in fact, I would say it is one of the more interesting things from Microsoft lately.

The book Pro LINQ does a very good job of covering this new technology, and it does so in a way that you would expect for a "Professional" level book.

For example, I found it immediately appealing that Chapter 1 starts with a code example before ever getting to any regular text. The rest of the book follows suit. There are plenty of explanations, but sometimes seeing the code & result provides the clearest view.

The author does a good job of explaining the technology in detail, why it is useful, and very practical tips on how to make the most of it. The book covers using LINQ to query Objects, XML, DataSets and finally SQL.

I have used the book as an introduction to the topic, and for that it has done an excellent job. It appears that the book is comprehensive enough to also serve as a working reference book, but I have not personally had the chance to use it as such yet.

Forgot your password? FAQs Shipping Options Returns Your Orders Your Account