Microsoft Silverlight Books

Excellent General Reference to LINQ

Originally published by the Denver Visual Studio User Group at [...].

Full Disclosure: This book was given to me for my review.

The book overall is an excellent general reference to LINQ. This covers a wide range of technical levels from beginning LINQ to some esoteric advanced topics including Parallel LINQ and extending LINQ.

Although the book is a lengthy 688 pages, it packs just enough detail to cover each topic very well. If the book were used as a textbook, it would likely qualifying as a two-semester class. It starts with foundations, covers relational data, XML, advanced topics, and finally practical applications of LINQ. I even found the appendix useful which covered new language features for both C# and VB.NET.

This is written with all of the new features in the .NET Framework v3.5 and there are many. I think the authors did a great job dividing the book into five logical parts. Given the vastness of LINQ, this is very sensible. Two parts of the book I enjoyed the most include Foundations and LINQ and XML. The Foundations part was helpful answering those questions that help not just cover important topics but lend a fundamental understanding of LINQ's purpose. This is important for anyone trying to master LINQ.

Reading through the LINQ and XML chapters becomes a great timesaver as you can learn to very quickly manipulate an XML document more like a collection of data using XDocument rather than using the cumbersome XmlDocument. Paolo and Marco do very well pointing out the object-oriented approach to using XML within the LINQ to XML programming framework.

Of course, code samples and further details are available throughout the book. The book format is also well done. Partitioning between text, source code, further detail, and important notes is apparent. You will also not find reams of endless source code. Each example is done with good judgment that gets to the point with elegance.

I highly recommend this book as a general reference for LINQ from start to finish. As I mentioned, a wide range of technical levels are covered here. You will find LINQ very useful if you don't already and it can become a great timesaver.

Richard Ruge
13 January, 2010

Good Book But A Little Overhwhelming for a First LINQ Text

Overall, I liked this book. It provided a thorough explanation of key LINQ concepts, complete with the "hows" and the "whys." I also liked the progression the authors used in terms of building on simple concepts and subsequently adding complexity. I am sure I will use it as a reference moving forward.

I rated this book 4 (vs. 5) stars because I think the authors, in their exuberance to be precise, sometime get caught up in details that obscure more practical and pragmatic points. In addition, a few of the chapters would have been better off as appendices, especially the one titled Inside Expression Trees. I doubt that most first-time LINQ developers will find a need to spelunk or merge expression trees - they will instead query SQL Server to implement their line of business applications.

Lastly, I thought the book was a little wordy. The authors tend to repeat themselves often, and use many words where few would suffice. I found myself getting bored by the end of the book.

All in all, worth the read and a good reference.




John P. Puopolo
05 May, 2009

No, thanks

It seems a book writed by teachers that want theirs students knowledge-far from themselfs. No suggestion. No tips and tricks. And often, they write complex phrases to say simple thinks. Keep away

Massimo Lombardini
03 October, 2008

A very useful book

I started playing with LINQ three years ago, after the first public CTP. I'm fascinated about this fantastic technology for many reasons.
It's a pleasure for me reading this book... I found in it many aspects that I really don't know so well. It's well written, clear and complete. Its pragmatic approach reveals authors skills about LINQ.

I surely recommend this book for "beginners" and also for "experienced users".

Mantovani Daniele
30 September, 2008

Great book!

I bought this book to understand how to use the new data object model "LINQ" for my certification plan. I think that the authors have done a great job with this book!

The book starts with an introduction about LINQ and its use in .NET that helped me to understand the potential.

Finally, I recommend the book to everyone has to upgrade his skill!

Giuseppe Spaziani
22 August, 2008

God Job!

I finally understood when and why use LINQ.
Our developers started to work with LINQ and we going to concretize our work also thanks this book.

Igor Macori
10 August, 2008

Complete Book

As an owner of the previous book "Introducing Linq" -written by the same authors- that really helped me to enter in the Linq world, I was pretty curious about this new book and now that I read I can absolutely recommend.

After an exhaustive introduction about what is Linq and about its fundamentals, the book covers in detail the several Linq flavours (and not only the more common ones, but also the union between Linq and Asp.net, Wcf, Wpf/Silverlight, etc.). One of the best point in my opinion is that it tries to explain that Linq is not only "Linq to Database" and especially Linq2Sql but, above all, a new manner of writing code to manipulate data (from objects collections, to relational data, to xml nodes, etc...)

The Part IV of the book is maybe one of the more interesting. You don't find on the net many examples on how to write a custom Linq Provider: the ch. 12 with a pratical scenario (a Flight search service) shows you how to make and, in my case, if it is too complicated or worthwhile for you :-)

I loved the ch.13 about Parallel Linq (the GHZ rush is ended and asap we dev should seriously think to take advantage of multicore processors); but my favorite chapter is the 15th (Linq in a Multitier Solution) because since the first beta my doubts were where to "put" Linq (as a Dal replacement ? called from Biz Layer ? returning IQueryable or IEnuberable ?). This chapter doesn't suggest a DEFINITIVE solution (because it doesn't exists.. it depends from a lot of situations) but really helps you to make your idea more clear.

As I told I can only recommend this book either for the "Linq Beginners", or for more skilled ones.

Sandro Rizzetto
18 July, 2008

Not for VB.NET people

I got this book after reading the reviews on Amazon where it was rated fairly well. As a VB.Net programmer, I have tried to use the book several times and been totally frustrated. Not only because all the code samples are C#, but because I could rarely find anything that related to what I was trying to do (e.g. populate a datagrid, create a crystal report, etc. If you are a VB person, find another book.

R. Chesnutt
10 July, 2008

If you liked their last book...

In the interest of full disclosure, I did assist in some of the technical editing of this book. However my opinion of it here is as objective as I can be.

If you read their last book, you'll certainly be able to appreciate the attention to detail the authors give to the material as well as their in-depth knowledge of the subject matter. There last book was 5 stars across the board, but b/c of how early it came out, it was concise and to the point. This one takes a slightly different approach, characterized best as 'no stone unturned'. With respect to LINQ, the competition among books is pretty intense. Pretty much every book ocvers LINQ fundamentals and does it in a unique enough way that you get a good bit from it.

The best way I would characterize this book is that it's like their last one if it went to the gym and did powerlifting for 2 years. Including indices and tables etc, it's just under 660 pages. Each chapter is 30+ pages and they cover LINQ in the same sequence as they did before just with more examples.

Where I was most impressed was in Chapter 11 on Expression trees. They provide a really exhaustive discussion on the subject matter and even though Expression Trees aren't the most exciting things in the world, you get a ton of detailed content that never gets boring. And what you get here is something you get throughout the book - enough examples to cover just about every scenario you'll likely encounter at work. To that end, it reminds me much of the exhaustive coverage David Sceppa gave Core ADO.NET - where he had an example for every question scenario you'd ever ask about.

In chapter 12 they cover Extending Linq - which, isn't something you'll probably need to do today but is definitely something that's going to become prevalent as time progresses.

Then they move into Parallel LINQ in Chapter 13 and cover n-tier linq in chapter 15. The performance implications of LINQ is not something that's been covered much until this point and I think they did a superb job on it.

Then they move into LINQ and ASP.NET , LINQ and WCF and finish things up with a discussion on the Entity Framework. If I paid the entire book price and got only a single chapter of any of the ones after 11 - I'd still feel I got my money's worth. And that's not to say the < Chapter 11 ones aren't good - on the contrary they are quite good - it's just that starting in 11 they really touch upon areas that haven't gotten a whole lot of attention until now.

If you're new to linq - this book will be your ADO.NET Core reference equivalent. If you've been working with LINQ for a while - you'll feel the same way. It's well written, interesting, covers scenario after scenario and gives you both the basics and the really core internals information that will no doubt make this "The" LINQ book.

William G. Ryan
03 June, 2008