Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008

I got this book some time ago, and have only just finished it, but already it has become one of my most treasured posessions (sad I know..but remember i'm a geek).Now I am no stranger to LINQ, and have written numerous articles on LINQ myself, and have been using LINQ for about 1 year now, but I have to say the attention that Joe Rattz has given it in this book, is nothing short of excellent.The 1st 1/3 of the book didn't yield anything new to me personally, but LINQ newbies would surely benefit from this section. But for me personally the treatment of the 2nd and 3rd parts of the book were just great. And they were where the real action lay.Of particular merit for me was Chapter 17 Concurreny Conflicts, when dealing with LINQ to SQL. There are about 25 pages in this chapter, but this is a big issue, and its handled beautifully and dutifully by Mr Rattz. I take my hat off to him for this chapter. In fact in my opinion it's worth buying this book just for that chapter alone.That's not to say the rest of the book isn't good, because it is. It's all good.Now I don't know if you are aware about some of the new C# syntax, but some that are new to C#, go a bit crazy with automatic properties, object initializers, anonomous delegates, lambdas everywhere...And to be honest it becomes quite obscure looking code (not to mention hard to debug).When I first heard about this book, my fear was that there would be lots of this sort of code in this book, but thankfully I was proved wrong.There are lambdas, but the are used when required, and not use for the sake of it.All in all I thoroughly recommend this book.Buy it, buy it now.

Some books make you feel that you are learning secrets from an insider sitting next to you. Unfortunately this book feels like they asked the summer intern sitting next to you to read the documentation for LINQ then a week later to show you the cool things he has been able to do with it. He tries hard, but you know he would really prefer to be surfing.The book is very repetitious. A lot of the text is cut and paste then change a few words here and there. The code samples follow the pattern - cut and paste and change a couple of lines. The callouts repeat what is in the main text. Much of the book is just a regurgitated version of the docs.The writing style tries to be chummy but really grated with me. The text is littered with 'wow!', 'How slick is that?', 'awesome!' and other such phrases. One section even ends with the words 'Sweet! Dude!'. Perhaps a better title for this book would be 'Joe Rattz's excellent adventures with LINQ'.The book covers all you need to know about LINQ but I found it very tedious.

Compared to other 'Pro' titles it's more like an introduction to LINQ. It mainly gives an overview of existing LINQ-providers instead of - for example - build your own providers.

I bought this book thinking that it will have a detailed explanation of LINQ. But eventhough the book claims to be for professionals, most of the material is taken from MSDN especially the secion on LINQ for SQL is literally copy-paste.I have given it 2 stars for the only reason that the subject is new and the author has gone into a trouble to get the MSDN parts and put them together in a book.

As soon as I opened the book up I was hooked. I haven't finished the book as I am going through it slowly, but let me tell you something. I am an avid read of programmer books, it has been a long time since I was this excited about a new technology as I am about LINQ.I finally got VS 2008 installed at work and home, and I have been loving it. Every time Microsoft does something great, they always seem to out do themselves with even better techniology. Quite frankly it is kinda hard to just keep up as a developer at times. It sometimes is hard to not feel overwhelmed, but believe me, this technology is worth knowing.The author elucidates LINQ in such a way, he has earned my respect as one of the finest authors around. Not to mention Apress is the BEST publisher of programming books bar none.My book shelf is mostly Apress, with a few Microsoft books and I also love the "In a Nutshell", especially C# 3.0 In a Nutshell.Anyhow, get on the band wagon if you haven't already and trust me, this author will inspire you. He has inspired me, I am excited about LINQ.Happy coding!

Vous souhaitez devenir expert linq? Possible .très bien présenté avec des exemples concrets . Accessible a tout développeurs.Très utile.

As I understand it, this was Joe's first book, and apparently no one told him that he did WAY too much work.I liked the chapter on the improvements to 2008, and I liked the overall message that was communicated in this book which was that these are not just simple changes to the language, these are fundamental changes, which will shift the way that programming in C# is done.Anyway, great job Joe, you could have produced half to three fourths of what you did, and I would still have given you a 5 star rating.

Ich bin seit einiger Zeit bekennender Fan von apress Büchern - bisher nur gute bis sehr gute Bücher gehabt. Deshalb griff ich auch hier zu, um meine Linq Kenntnisse zu erweitern.Leider entspricht dieses Buch nicht der gewohnten Qualität. Es besteht aus viel redundantem Code - und damit meine ich nicht ab und zu eine Wiederholung: Linq2Xml zum Beispiel, ein sehr interessantes Thema, wird in über 100 Seiten behandelt - davon sind unterm Strich mindestens 30-40 Seiten exakt identisch. Die verschiedenen Wege, Daten zu iterieren, werden stets von dem absolut selben Codeblock begleitet, welcher eine halbe Seite in Beschlag nimmt und nur für die Initialisierung der Daten zuständig ist. Da wird einem beim Lesen echt übel.Weitere dutzende Seiten gehen für (mehr oder weniger) Kopien aus der Microsoft Dokumentation drauf.Es bremst den Spaß und den Lerneffekt ungemein, ständig umzublättern und zu denken "das kennst du doch schon..". Nachdem man das ein oder andere Kapitel hinter sich hat, kann man fast immer bereits den Inhalt der nächsten Seite/n vorausahnen.Der Titel des Buchs lautet "PRO Linq". Auf der Rückseite steht "Intermediate - Advanced". Es handelt sich aber definitiv um ein Einsteigerbuch und müsste den Titel "Linq for beginners" tragen. Erweiterte Theman, z.B. das Schreiben eines eigenen Linq Providers, wird nicht im Ansatz behandelt. Das habe ich von einem Buch, das in diese Kategorie fällt, allerdings unbedingt erwartet. Ein einzelner Satz tauchte in diesem Kontext auf, der in etwa lautete "we will not cover this in any detail" - Danke, sehr "Pro".Man hat in solchen Augenblicken einfach die naheliegende Vermutung, dass der Autor selbst keine ausreichenden Kenntnisse hat. Da füllt er lieber Seite für Seite mit Wiederholungen auf und bringt seitenweise sinnlose Übersichten, die man jeder Onlinedokumentation entnehmen kann. Es gibt einem persönlich einfach ein sehr ungutes/unbefriedigendes Gefühl, wenn man den Eindruck hat, dass der Verfasser wahrscheinlich nicht wirklich besser ist, als man selbst. Man geht ja auch nicht zu einem Karatetrainer, um diesen ständig zu vermöbeln.Mir persönlich hat das Buch nichts gebracht. Zum Glück habe ich es günstig erhalten. Ein bisschen Linq2Xml Wissen, aber nicht mehr als vereinzelte Blogs ebenfalls hätten vermitteln können.Streng genommen habe ich in Steven Sanderson's Buch über MVC, wo eine kurze Linq-Erläuterung auf einer Hand voll Seiten abgebildet ist, mehr gelernt.

LINQ is one of the coolest ideas to come out of MS in the past few years. Its tight integration with Visual Studio 2008 makes data access more intuitive and we can FINALLY drop the "SQL as strings" syntax in favor of something that can actually be validated at compile time instead of "blowing up" at run-time.I've spent a fair amount of time researching LINQ and even played with it somewhat. This book would be great for those who at least know the basics of LINQ and what its purpose is. I honestly can't think of a topic about LINQ that was not addressed in some detail in this book. The writing was complete with lots of examples to illustrate the points. An earlier reviewer has said they "stopped at chapter 4" because of the lack of detailed query language syntax descriptions BUT I don't understand because there is an exhaustive definition of the language in chapter 2. I think their 1 star review was unfair and borderline malicious.Until something comes along better, this would be my pick for the best LINQ book on the market.