http://blogs.msdn.com/dinesh.kulkarni/archive/2008/07/01/linq-to-sql-tips-9-understanding-datacontext-s-internal-caching.aspxBack to the "tips" series after a little break ... One common question I get is about caching of data in LINQ to SQL. It means a lot of different things so let's start with the following baseline: LINQ to SQL was designed to get you objects from the databaseen-USCommunityServer 2.1 SP1 (Build: 61025.2)http://blogs.msdn.com/dinesh.kulkarni/archive/2008/07/01/linq-to-sql-tips-9-understanding-datacontext-s-internal-caching.aspx#8764936Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:22:43 GMT91d46819-8472-40ad-a661-2c78acb4018c:8764936logicalmind<p>If I switch ObjectTrackingEnabled to false, does the DataContext not track the returned object anymore?</p> <p>What happens if I create my data objects as POCO's with Table/Column attributes and they are not derived from EntityRef and don't use EntitySets?</p> <p>Basically I want to use linq to sql for queries (read-only). I don't want linq to cache anything.</p> http://blogs.msdn.com/dinesh.kulkarni/archive/2008/07/01/linq-to-sql-tips-9-understanding-datacontext-s-internal-caching.aspx#8782671Mon, 28 Jul 2008 08:48:35 GMT91d46819-8472-40ad-a661-2c78acb4018c:8782671Dinesh.Kulkarni<p>&gt; If I switch ObjectTrackingEnabled to false, does the DataContext not track the returned object anymore?</p> <p>With that setting, your objects won't be tracked. It improves perf a bit further for queries.</p> <p>You can absolutely use POCOs. You won't get the bidirectional relationship management provided by EntitySet/EntityRef. But you can use POCOs for queries (and updates as well if you want).</p>