Dispelling some urban legends about LINQ to SQL

  • Article

Scott has a great post where he dispels the following two myths about using LINQ to SQL.

  • LINQ to SQL requires you to start with a database schema.
  • LINQ to SQL requires your classes to implement INotifyPropertyChanged and use EntitySet<T> for any associated collections.

Looking at the post I think he also added in dispelling a third legend, though he didn't explicitly call it out.

  • LINQ to SQL requires you to use custom attributes in your code and cannot work with a simple poco.   (In other words, LINQ to SQL supports persistance ignorance! )

Personally I have not used LINQ to SQL yet, though I do intend to play with it at some point. I know I have talked to many folks (including friends at Thoughtworks) and I have heard it far easier to grok and use than some other Entity frameworks :)

On the intuitiveness said, I am sold. It took me about five minutes of looking at sample code to understand how to use it.

Thanks for this post Scott!