Author: Paolo Pialorsi and Marco Russo
Publisher: Microsoft Press, 2008
Pages: 660
ISBN: 978-0735624009
Aimed at: C# developers wanting to master LINQ
Rating: 5
Pros: Advanced and well reasoned treatment of LINQ
Cons: Too detailed for a casual read
Reviewed by: Ian Elliot

This is an advanced but still readable discussion of LINQ. It covers the basics, how it works and gives some examples that go beyond the obvious. All of the examples are in C# but this shouldn’t be a problem as the ideas generalise. Starting from the basics of LINQ, LINQ to SQL, objects, XML and so on, we work our way through its different flavours and on into more advanced topics such as expression trees, extending LINQ, parallel LINQ and other implementations. This is all fascinating stuff but it’s clear that it’s not all going to be of interest to every LINQ developer. The final part of the book deals with applied LINQ and it consists of a number of common applications – multi-tier, LINQ in ASP .NET, Sliverlight/WPF and LINQ and communications foundation.

This is a really good book. It is written for the intelligent reader who can program reasonably well but it goes out of its way to make those elements of LINQ that might be unfamiliar seem reasonable. Highly recommended.

<Reviewed in VSJ>