Visual Studio "Orcas" March 2007 CTP Download - LINQ ADO.NET C# 3.0 Entity Data Model

Visual Studio "Orcas" March 2007 CTP Download - LINQ ADO.NET C# 3.0

by David Hayden ( Microsoft MVP C# ), Filed: C# 3.0 Tutorials

The Visual Studio “Orcas” March 2007 CTP is available for download.

This is the first one I will be downloading because it represents a big milestone for the LINQ and ADO.NET Features. I will be doing a lot of tutorials on LINQ and ADO.NET over the next few weeks.

Visual Studio Highlights:

C# 3.0 Language Support: This CTP implements all of the C#3.0 language features from the May LINQ CTP including:
- Query Expressions
- Object and Collection Initializers
- Extension Methods
- Local Variable Type Inference and Anonymous Types
- Lambda Expressions bound to Delegates and Expression trees
- Complete design-time support: Intellisense, Formatting, Colorization

LINQ to ADO.NET
- ADO.NET is fully integrated with LINQ and offers many options for using LINQ in various scenarios: LINQ to SQL provides direct access to database tables from the programming environment, LINQ to Entities enables developers to use LINQ over EDM models, and LINQ to DataSet allows the full expressivity of LINQ to be used over DataSets.
- LINQ to Entities enables developers to program against a relational database using a view of the data that is appropriate for the application they are building, independent of the structure of the underlying database. The use of the Entity Data Model (EDM) enables developers to design models that follow the concepts built into the application, instead of having to map them to constructs available in relational stores. LINQ to Entities is built on the ADO.NET Provider model and will support working against different back end relational stores in addition to Microsoft SQL Server. This CTP includes a LINQ to Entities provider for SQL Server and SQL Server Compact Edition.
- LINQ to SQL (previous name DLinq) has enhanced the functionality from the May 2006 LINQ CTP. You can find it in System.Data.Linq namespace in System.Data.Linq.dll. New in this release is that DataContext provides optimized modes for read-only use and serialization . Also new is that DataShape streamlines eager loading capabilities and adds the ability to set queries on relationships

ADO.NET
- Extended, more powerful data APIs with the ADO.NET Entity Framework
  - With the ADO.NET Entity Framework developers will be able to model the view of the data that is appropriate for each one of the applications they are building, independently of the structure of the data in the underlying database. The use of the Entity Data Model (EDM) enables developers to design models that follow the concepts built into the application, instead of having to map them to constructs available in relational stores. Once the model is in place, the powerful ADO.NET Entity Framework API is used to access and manipulate the data as .NET classes or as rows and columns, whatever is appropriate for each application.
- Added paging and stored procedures for update (“update customization”) for ADO.NET Entity Framework:
  - Paging: the paging support in the ADO.NET Entity Framework allows developers to “page” over data in a database by indicating the start row and number of rows to be included in the result. Paging is available through Entity SQL (using the LIMIT AND SKIP keywords) and through the query-builder methods in the ObjectQuery class (Top and Skip). In a future CTP the feature will also be enabled to be used in LINQ queries by means of the standard Take and Skip LINQ operators.
  - Stored-procedures for update customization: the Entity Framework by default automatically generates SQL statements for insert, update and delete operations when processing changes to entities in memory to be sent to the database. With the stored-procedures update customization feature developers have the option to override the automatic SQL generation and instead provide stored-procedures that will perform the insert, update and delete operations, which the system will call during entity change processing. Among other things, this enables scenarios where direct access to tables is restricted in the database and the only way to make changes to the data is through stored-procedures.
- Microsoft Synchronization Services for ADO.NET
  - Provides an application programming interface (API) to synchronize data between data services and a local store. The Synchronization Services API is modeled after the ADO.NET data access APIs and gives you an intuitive way to synchronize data. It makes building applications for occasionally connected environments a logical extension of building applications where you can depend on a consistent network connection.