Well, it finally happened.  My book is so chock-full of useful LINQ information that we had to upgrade it from a Foundations level book to a Pro level book.  Since we had to change the name to reflect the depth of information we also adopted the branding that Microsoft appears to be moving toward.  Therefore my book previously titled Foundations of LINQ in C# has been retitled Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008.

Look for Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008 in your book store at the end of October
2007.

I just wanted to create a quick blog post reporting that I completed the first draft of my chapter on LINQ to XML.  I must tell you that I found it totally exciting using LINQ to XML to work with XML.  Even if you factor out the capability of performing LINQ queries, the enhancements to working with XML that the API provides are extraordinary in my opinion.  I normally find XML a nuissance to work with.  Not so with LINQ to XML.

As an example, in my book, I provide an example at the beginning of the chapter that creates a simple XML document using the Microsoft XML DOM that is based on the W3C XML DOM.  That example has 25 lines of real code to create the document, and the code obscures the XML structure.  Using the LINQ to XML API, I later create that same XML structure with only 10 lines of code, and the XML structure is quite ascertainable from the code.  What a savings.

This new productivity enh ...

When I look at the official MSDN LINQ forum, I am surprised to see the categorical breakdown of the posts.  Just eyeballing the posts, I would guess that about 40% of the posts are environmental/release oriented.  By this, I mean that the post is concerning issues such as install problems, version issues, future release questions, and compatibility problems, etc.  The next 40% are database related, and the remaining 20% are miscellaneous.

What I find surprising is that such a large percentage of the posts are database related (LINQ to SQL), as opposed to general LINQ questions concerning queries of in-memory collections (LINQ to Objects), or XML questions (LINQ to XML).  I guess the reason I find it so surprising is that to me, LINQ adds so much more to in-memory collection queries and XML queries or generation than it does to database queries.  Don't get me wrong, I surely appreciate the ability to perform LINQ queries on a SQL Server database, but I ...