First there was LINQ, then ...

Yesterday at the Saudi Arabia launch event in Jeddah there was a lot of interest in LINQ. One of the great questions was about existing code: If you have an existing implementation of a domain model, can you enable the existing code to support LINQ? Well, yes and no. First, the .NET 3.5 LINQ implementation allows for 1-to-1 mapping from table to class, so if you have a simple domain model you could in theory map existing properties to columns in your tables, but there are often issues with existing members and more likely even, issues with your existing CRUD code that is not modeled along the same lines as that required for LINQ.

Solution? ADO .NET Entity Framework! For a video overview, take a look at the Channel9 video.