LINQ comes as the most significant improvement to Visual Studio 2008 (formerly code-named Orcas) and the accompanying .NET Framework 3.5, which provides developers with the ability to write SQL-style queries directly from within the Visual Basic (VB) and C# programming languages.

With LINQ, database queries which looked like "SELECT * FROM Authers WHERE Country = 'India'" before can be coded in a more friendly manner and with intellisence using built-in language features, enabling the compiler and integrated development environment (IDE) to assist the developer with features such as statement completion and checking for potential errors before the code is run.

Microsoft includes LINQ support for several data sources, including built-in .NET data types, such as lists and arrays; SQL Server; and XML. More features of VS2008, in the next blog... Happy Coding ;) Beta 2 of VS 2008 can be downloaded, including image files for running in a virtual machine, at MSDN.