Making Sense of it All: Heterogeneous Data Access on the .NET Framework 3.5

dotNetConnections is delighted to announce that we have not one, but two BoF's at this years TechEd, North America conferences TechEd Developers & TechEd IT Professionals. Our topic this year, 'Making Sence of it All: Heterogeneous Data Access on the .NET Framework 3.5' should provide an broad basis so we can deal with many perspectives on how best to deal with data access on the .NET Framework. For one thing, the plethora data access options and data models that now exist should sound as warning shot for all: each data access option cannot possibly suit every need, so if you've questions and opinions on what option suits your development needs, it will be the place to be. BoF co-ordinates as follows:

• Wednesday, June 4th @ 19h45 to 20h45
• Wednesday, June 11th @18h30 to 19h30

Send email here or comment below if you're planning on attending, or have topics you'd like to cover...

LINQ links for 3/25/2008

By Tech Ed 2008, it will be almost two years since this posting appeared on LINQ in Action blog, so it wins today's LINQ links. It's interesting to take another look at some of the projected values to developers and architects back in mid 2006...

http://linqinaction.net/blogs/main/archive/2006/07/28/why-linq-will-succeed.aspx

1. LINQ syntax beats SQL syntax. SQL is flawed in that queries become exponentially difficult to write as their complexity grows. LINQ scales much better in this regard. Once you get used to it, it's hard to go back.
2. Database queries are easily composable. You can conditionally add an ORDER BY or WHERE predicate without discovering at run-time that a certain string combination generates a syntax error.
3. More bugs are picked up at compile-time.
4. Parameterization is automatic and type-safe.
5. LINQ queries can directly populate an object hierarchy.
6. LINQ to SQL provides a model for provider independence that might really work.
7. LINQ significantly cuts plumbing code and clutter. Without sweeping stuff under the carpet, like Workflow or Datasets. This is a credit to the design team.
8. C# hasn't suffered in the process (in fact, it's gained).

Out of 8 projections, dotNET Connections would give this forecast a 5/8. Not bad considering how inaccurate these predictions tend to be. Before dotNETConnections publishes what we value-adds we think won out, lets hear your thoughts. Comment below!