LINQ Reconciling objects, relations and XML in the .NET framework

Short Description
Besides the general query operators, the LINQ framework. also defines two domain-specific … the ability of LINQ to provide intensional representations of …

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Content
LINQ: Reconciling objects, relations and XML in the .NET
framework
Erik Meijer
Microsoft Corporation
Redmond, USA
emeijer@microsoft.com
Brian Beckman
Microsoft Corporation
Redmond, USA
bbeckman@microsoft.com
Gavin Bierman
Microsoft Research
Cambridge, UK
gmb@microsoft.com
Introduction Many software applications today need to
handle data from different data models; typically objects
from the host programming language along with the relational
and XML data. The ROX impedance mismatch
makes programs awkward to write and hard to maintain.
The .NET Language-Integrated Query (LINQ) framework,
proposed for the next release of the .NET framework, approaches
this problem by defining a design pattern of generalpurpose
standard query operators for traversal, filter, and
projection. Based on this pattern, any .NET language can
define special query comprehension syntax that is subsequently
compiled into these standard operators (our code
examples are in VB).
Besides the general query operators, the LINQ framework
also defines two domain-specific APIs that work over XML
(XLinq) and relational data (DLinq) respectively. The operators
over XML use a lightweight and easy-to-use in-memory
XML representation to provide XQuery-style expressiveness
in the host programming language. The operators over relational
data…