Extension Methods

"Extension methods allow developers to add new methods to the public contract of an existing CLR type, without having to sub-class it or recompile the original type.  Extension Methods help blend the flexibility of "duck typing" support popular within dynamic languages today with the performance and compile-time validation of strongly-typed languages."

 

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/03/13/new-orcas-language-feature-extension-methods.aspx

LINQ to XML

"LINQ to XML is a built-in LINQ data provider that is implemented within the "System.Xml.Linq" namespace in .NET 3.5."

"LINQ to XML provides a clean programming model that enables you to read, construct and write XML data.  You can use LINQ to XML to perform LINQ queries over XML that you retrieve from the file-system, from a remote HTTP URL or web-service, or from any in-memory XML content."

"LINQ to XML provides much richer (and easier) querying and data shaping support than the low-level XmlReader/XmlWriter API in .NET today.  It also ends up being much more efficient (and uses much less memory) than the DOM API that XmlDocument provides."

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/08/07/using-linq-to-xml-and-how-to-build-a-custom-rss-feed-reader-with-it.aspx

LINQ to SQL Debug Visualizer

"One of the nice development features that LINQ to SQL supports is the ability to use a "debug visualizer" to hover over a LINQ expression while in the VS 2008 debugger and inspect the raw SQL that the ORM will ultimately execute at runtime when evaluating the LINQ query expression."

 

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/07/31/linq-to-sql-debug-visualizer.aspx

LINQ to SQL

"Developers can use LINQ with any data source.  They can express efficient query behavior in their programming language of choice, optionally transform/shape data query results into whatever format they want, and then easily manipulate the results.  LINQ-enabled languages can provide full type-safety and compile-time checking of query expressions, and development tools can provide full intellisense, debugging, and rich refactoring support when writing LINQ code."

"LINQ to SQL is an O/RM (object relational mapping) implementation that ships in the .NET Framework "Orcas" release, and which allows you to model a relational database using .NET classes.  You can then query the database using LINQ, as well as update/insert/delete data from it."

"LINQ to SQL fully supports transactions, views, and stored procedures.  It also provides an easy way to integrate data validation and business logic rules into your data model."

• Part 1: Introduction to LINQ to SQL
  
• Part 2: Defining our Data Model Classes
  
• Part 3: Querying our Database
  
• Part 4: Updating our Database
  
• Part 5: Binding UI using the ASP:LinqDataSource Control
  
• Part 6: Retrieving Data Using Stored Procedures
  
• Part 7: Updating our Database using Stored Procedures
  
• Part 8: Executing Custom SQL Expressions
  
• Part 9: Using a Custom LINQ Expression with the <asp:LinqDatasource> control

The ADO.NET Entity Framework Overview

"When one takes a look at the amount of code that the average application developer must write to address the impedance mismatch across various data representations (for example objects and relational stores) it is clear that there is an opportunity for improvement. Indeed, there are many scenarios where the right framework can empower an application developer to focus on the needs of the application as opposed to the complexities of bridging disparate data representations."

"A primary goal of the upcoming version of ADO.NET is to raise the level of abstraction for data programming, thus helping to eliminate the impedance mismatch between data models and between languages that application developers would otherwise have to deal with. Two innovations that make this move possible are Language-Integrated Query and the ADO.NET Entity Framework. The Entity Framework exists as a new part of the ADO.NET family of technologies. ADO.NET will LINQ-enable many data access components: LINQ to SQL, LINQ to DataSet and LINQ to Entities."

"This document describes the ADO.NET Entity Framework, what problem spaces it is targeting and how its various components address those problems."

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa697427(VS.80).aspx

GridView BoundField with "mailto" email address

<asp:BoundField DataField="Email" HeaderText="Email" SortExpression="Email" HtmlEncode="False" ReadOnly="True" DataFormatString="&lt;a href='mailto:{0}'&gt;{0}&lt;/a&gt;" />