Pro LINQ Object Relational Mapping with C# 2008

Over a year ago (I think) my buddy Vijay Mehta handed me a copy of his book Pro LINQ Object Relational Mapping with C# 2008 After he explained the title to me (no I’m not really kidding), I said thanks and put the book aside until I could think about it. Well that time was this weekend. (Yea, I’m slow.)

The problem that I was trying to solve this morning was to anchor my thoughts about LINQ and where it fits in. Yea, I know that I should have been spending more time understanding LINQ but I just haven’t had time. I learned enough to be able to read a LINQ query when I saw one in code but as far as really digging in – it just hadn’t happened for me yet. So I sat down to do a read of Vijay’s book.

The book really talks about LINQ as it relates to LINQ to SQL and LINQ to Entities (Entity Framework). Having had the pleasure of sitting across a table from Vijay I could hear his voice in the text. I quickly was able to hear him walk through the core concepts of mapping for LINQ to work both for SQL and for Entity Framework. My need wasn’t to understand how to do the mapping to create providers for SQL or Entities (yet) but I appreciated the coverage of the topics. It allowed me to see “behind the curtain” to understand what’s going on in the background when I’m writing a LINQ query.

If you’re trying to understand how LINQ fits in, how to handle your data mapping, or how to create mappings between your data and your classes – it’s a good book.