C#: Introduction to LINQ, Advantages of LINQ

Updated on September 21, 2015     Kisan Patel

Language-Integrated Query (LINQ) is the name for a set of technologies based on the integration of query capabilities directly into the C# language.

LINQ is a technique used to retrieve data from any object that implements the IEnumerable<T> interface. In LINQ, arrays, collections, relational data, and XML are all potential data sources and we can query over it to get only those data that meets our criteria and all is done using C#.

Advantages of LINQ

• Unifies the way of accessing data from different data sources.
• Compile-time checking of all queries, reduces run-time errors.
• Strongly typed.
• Can be applied in any project layer(UI/Business/Data).
• Extensive Intellisence/Debugging support.
• Queries can be dynamically.
• Tables are automatically created into class.
• Columns are automatically created into properties.
• Relationship are automatically appeaded to classes.
• Lambda expressions are awesome.
• Data is easy to setup and use.

With LINQ you just need to perform three distinct actions.

1. Obtain the data source.
2. Create the query.
3. Execute the query.