September 13, 2005
@ 11:02 PM

The former co-workers (the Microsoft XML team) have been hard at work with the C# language team to bring the XML query integration into the core languages for the .NET Framework. From Dave Remy's post Anders unveils LINQ! (and XLinq) we learn

In Jim Allchin's keynote At PDC2005 today Anders Hejlsberg showed the LINQ project for the first time.  LINQ stands for Language Integrated Query.  The big idea behind LINQ is to provide a consistent query experience across different "LINQ enabled" data access technologies AND to allow querying these different data access technologies in a single query.  Out of the box there are three LINQ enabled data access technologies that are being shown at PDC.  The first is any in-memory .NET collection that you foreach over (any .NET collection that implements IEnumerable<T>).  The second is DLinq which provides LINQ over a strongly typed relational database layer.  The third, which I have been working on for the last 6 months or so (along with Anders and others on the WebData XML team), is XLinq, a new in-memory XML programming API that is Language Integerated Query enabled.  It is great to get the chance to get this technology to the next stage of development and get all of you involved.  The LINQ Preview bits (incuding XLinq and DLinq) are being made available to PDC attendees.  More information on the LINQ project (including  the preview bits) are also available online at http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/future/linq

This is pretty innovative stuff and I definitely can't wait to download the bits when I get some free time. Perhaps I need to write an article exploring LINQ for XML.com the way I did with my Introducing C-Omega article? Then again, I still haven't updated my C# vs. Java comparison to account for C# 2.0 and Java 1.5. It looks like I'll be writing a bunch of programming language articles this fall. 

Which article would you rather see?