Professional Linq

What I liked about this book is how Scott talks about the Features of Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework that will help developers like me have a better understanding of LINQ. First 4 chapters of the book is more of an introduction then goes into the fundamentals. The LINQ to XML coverage is excellent. He talks about creating, traversing, manipulating. For me I thought that was great because it saved me a lot of headaches of trying to do things with XML the old fashion way. Scott also talks about LINQ to SQL - In my opinion majority of the book is about LINQ to SQL. In this subject he talks about different techniques that you can do with LINQ to SQL like for example LINQ to SQL Queries. What I noticed is that he briefly metions about LINQ to Objects. LINQ to Objects allows .NET developers to write "queries" over collections of objects. Traditionally, working with collections of objects meant writing a lot of looping code using for loops or foreach loops to iterate through a list carrying out filtering using if statements, and some action like keeping a running sum of a total property. LINQ frees you from having to write looping code; it allows you to write queries that filter a list or calculate aggregate functions on elements in a collection as a set. Overall, I think this book is a good reference for developers that want to get into LINQ to XML or LINQ to SQL.

Before proceeding, I have an admission to make. I have worked with Scott as his technical editor on another book. However my assessment here is as objective as I can be. I have worked with LINQ for quite a while now, since I came across it in the early stages at the MVP summit a few years ago. In many ways I think it's a very easy subject to learn b/c in many ways, it is so similar to SQL. At the same time, as with anything, true mastery is not easy. Because I also teach a course on LINQ and Entity Framework, I buy every LINQ book that I can find and have seen it covered as a topic in many of the most recent C# books. The whole line of LINQ books that have come out are, in my opinion, very good. And while they all cover essentially the same topics, they all have their own way to approach the subject so I've gained a good bit by examining how each author approaches the subject. I think this book is a solid 4.5 stars - there wasn't 4.5 available but I think it's a lot closer to a five than a 4. Why do I think that? First off, it's thorough. Apparently another reader doesn't agree with this assesment and decided the book warranted 1 star b/c of it's light treatment [..]. While equality and non-discrimination are laudable objectives, I think getting upset b/c a book didn't give equal coverage to both languages is ridiculous and punishing an author with a 1 star review is really unfairly punitive. But, if equal coverage of both languages is what you need in a book - then be advised, you're going to be disappointed. If on the other hand, you feel that you can code in either language and that understanding the framework is what's important, well, you'll find this book rewarding. Code examples in both languages (and hey, if we're going to knock authors for discriminating against VB.NET, why not trash everyone that doesn't cover managed C++ or J# too. And what about F#?) take up a lot of space and Scott uses that space to delve into the functional areas of LINQ. It starts out covering the new language features of VB.NET 9 and C# 3.0 - features necessary to support linq and which are used commonly when coding with LINQ. Those include features such as object initializers, collection initializers, extension methods, implicitly typed local variables, lambda expressions, expression trees etc. He proceeds to the basic mechanics of LINQ queries. Much of this is covered in MSDN but he certainly expounds upon each area enough to make a substantive difference in your understanding. He moves on to LINQ to Objects and has a pretty detailed coverage of using LINQ to create business objects. He then moves to LINQ to XML and LINQ to Sql. The LINQ to XML coverage is excellent and leaves you wanting for nothing. The LINQ to Sql discussion is also pretty detailed although the coverage related to passing LINQ through tiers is a little short. However that's the case with each LINQ book and that's mainly b/c LINQ 2 Sql's n-tier story is not a happy one