It is nearly impossible today to write enterprise software without the use of one or more relational databases. Granted, there are cases when the data is transient and not stored in a database, but for the most part, software needs to consume and manipulate data in a database. It sounds easy, but there are hundreds of ways to connect software systems to databases and thousands of people who think they have the skeleton key for data access layers. Pro LINQ Object Relational Mapping in C# 2008 explains an efficient, repeatable way to apply industry design patterns to build scalable object-oriented data access layers. Object relational mapping (OR/M) has been a gray area in Microsoft development for many years. It's not that Microsoft language developers don't understand OR/M; in fact, the opposite is true, as is exemplified by the glut of third-party .NET OR/M tools on the market. The struggle has come more from the lack of native tools with the object-oriented and object persistence capacity to effectively work in this arena. With the inception of .NET, Microsoft overcame the first obstacle by developing an object-oriented environment and framework. The second obstacle, the native object persistence layer, is only now being realized with the introduction of Language Integrated Query (LINQ) and LINQ's children, the Language Integrated Query for Relational Databases (LINQ to SQL) and the Language Integrated Query for the ADO.NET Entity Framework (LINQ to Entities). The gray area no longer exists, and the .NET developers of the world finally have the native tools required to build modular, reusable data access layers. What you'll learn * The powerful advantages that OR/M can bring to your code * The native tools that are now available within Visual Studio 2008 for OR/M * How to build scalable object-oriented data access layers that take advantage of OR/M's flexibility * How LINQ fits into this picture, together with the advantages and disadvantages that it can bring * How the concepts work in the real world by examining a fully worked and detailed case study, created with an architecture than can be easily applied to a wide range of other situations Who this book is for This book is intended for Microsoft .N ET developers who are using or evaluating Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 to build data-aware applications, and it will provide patterns and resources that can be used to build enterprise class software.