Announcing Major Changes!

As Firesign Theatre used to say, "Everything you know is wrong!"

New Date: 3rd Wednesday (starting this month, August 19)

New Title: DATA SIG

New Location: Data Direct

The Data SIG will replace .NET in Depth on the monthly schedule. The Data SIG will expand to include not only LINQ, but T-SQL, XML, ADO.NET Data Services (Astoria), .NET RIA Services, Data Binding, Data Layer architecture and patterns, and probably a whole lot more.

More later.....

 LINQ - Language INtegrated Query for .NET 3.5 

2009: January   February ... July

2008: May   June   July   August   September   October   November

Welcome to the LINQ study group! We'll be kicking off meetings on Monday, May 12, 2008, 6:00 pm at Compuware (new location). See the TriNUG newsletter for additional details.

Here's a quick outline for (nominally) 12 months. At the first meeting, we'll talk about the order for these topics. I'm sure that as time passes and new tools become available, we'll need to revise and expand.

1. Introduction and language-related features
2. Standard LINQ operators
3. LINQ to XML API
4. LINQ to XML operators
5. LINQ to SQL tools and operators
6. Object Relational Mapping (ORM)
7. LINQ to SQL entity classes, and the DataContext
8. Complex LINQ to SQL operations
9. Data Binding with LINQ
10. Performance and Concurrency conflicts
11. LINQ to DataSets
12. N-tier architecture with LINQ
13. LINQ and the ADO.NET Entity Framework
14. Extending LINQ

In addition, it looks like the new certification tracks include a Microsoft Certified Technical Specialist (MCTS) for ADO.NET, which will include LINQ. The exam number is 70-561. As the study guides for this become available (approximately June 2008), we'll look into LINQ-related aspects of certification as well.

These are books you'll probably find very useful:

• Pro LINQ: Language Integrated Query in C# 2008
• LINQ in Action

For those who want to look at my slides and sample code from my LINQ presentation back in February, here are the links:

• Presentation (PowerPoint 2007, zipped)
• Presentation (PDF)
• Sample code (requires VisualStudio 2008)

Bring your laptops; learning LINQ is a hands-on exercise.

See you there,

Diane