C# in Depth

Summary351you look back at all the new features of C#, you’ll find few that don’t contribute significantlyto LINQ in some way or other. That is part of the reason for this chapter’s existence:to show the connections between all the features.I shouldn’t wax lyrical for too long, though—as well as the upsides of LINQ, we’veseen a few “gotchas.” LINQ will not always allow us to express everything we need in aquery, nor does it hide all the details of the underlying data source. The impedancemismatches that have caused developers so much trouble in the past are still with us:we can reduce their impact with ORM systems and the like, but without a properunderstanding of the query being executed on your behalf, you are likely to run intosignificant issues. In particular, don’t think of LINQ as a way of removing your need tounderstand SQL—just think of it as a way of hiding the SQL when you’re not interestedin the details.Despite the limitations, LINQ is undoubtedly going to play a major part in future .NETdevelopment. In the final chapter, I will look at some of the ways development is likelyto change in the next few years, and the part I believe C# 3 will play in that evolution.Licensed to Rhona Hadida