Introduction

• Review of three-tier OO application architecture
• Data access and data processing
• Polymorphism
• Inheritance
• Encapsulation
• Implementing to an interface
• Working with generic collections

Adopting New .NET 3.5 Visual Basic Language Features

Language constructs

• Writing query expressions
• Benefiting from implied-type declaration

Simplifying code

• Instantiating entity objects
• Comparing constructors with object initialisers
• Alternative object initialisation

Writing LINQ Queries

Syntax and semantics

• Coding LINQ queries
• Ordering data and objects
• Filtering data and objects using where

Iterating collections

• Interfacing between VB and LINQ using IEnumerable<T>
• Converting from IEnumerable<T> to List<T>

Querying SQL with LINQ

Comparing ADO.NET with LINQ

• DataSet objects vs. generic lists
• SqlDataReader vs. IEnumerable<T>
• Processing data-tier information

Connecting to and reading from a database

• Specifiying a connection string
• Attaching to a database with LINQ
• Working with table and entity classes
• Mapping objects to relational databases with the Object Relational Designer (O/R Designer) tool

Updating a database

• Inserting, updating and deleting data
• Error handling and exceptions
• Committing and rolling back transactions

Coding Lambda Expressions and Extension Methods

Filtering and ordering data with lambda expressions

• Constructing lambda expressions
• Specifying where and orderby constraints

Applying extended features

• Making code more flexible with delegates
• Sorting with delegates
• Streamlining code with anonymous types

Processing Data with LINQ Queries

Manipulating data

• Selecting data from multiple sources with selectmany
• Retrieving unique results with distinct
• Combining multiple results with join
• Aggregating with average and count

Filtering data

• Limiting result sets with take
• Discarding results with skip

Grouping data

• Choosing data with union, intersect and accept
• Collating with group by
• Creating hierarchical data structures with groupjoin

Implementing Stored Procedures using LINQ

Exploiting stored procedures

• Writing stored procedures in VB
• Calling stored procedures

Updating data via stored procedures

• Processing data with LINQ
• Integrating results sets

Processing XML with LINQ

Accessing XML

• Retrieving the document, elements and attributes
• Parsing an XML document using LINQ

Integrating XML in your code

• Creating XML directly: XML literals
• Embedding XML literals in dynamic expressions