Free Tool for LINQ Development

I was reading through my latest issue of MSDN magazine last night and came across a cool little tool that I thought I would blog about today.  The tool is mentioned in the “Toolbox” section of the magazine, which happens to be the first thing I read because it usually has something interesting that I haven’t heard of before…like LINQPad.

If you are developing with .NET 3.5 and you’re using LINQ you will love this little lightweight utility.  LINQPad is essentially a SQL Query window that can interpret C# or VB.NET code as well as straight LINQ queries.  You can connect to any database on your network, or local machine, and run queries/code and see the results.  The tool will also show you a different view of your query: say you typed in straight LINQ syntax, you could click the button to see it in lambda syntax, or SQL syntax.

You can find LINQPad at https://www.linqpad.net