Twin Cities Code Camp

To successfully create a ubiquitous data access technology that can work with any data source, Microsoft needed to build a framework that anyone can work with to introduce their own providers. This ubiquitous data access technology is called Language Integrated Query (LINQ). Today, Microsoft ships several LINQ providers out-of-the-box: LINQ to Objects, LINQ to DataSet, LINQ to SQL, LINQ to Entities, LINQ to XML, and LINQ to Data Services. There are also many 3rd party LINQ providers for various data sources, made possible by reusable .NET Framework types. LINQ to Twitter is one such 3rd party provider, which is the example used in this presentation. You'll learn how LINQ to Twitter is implemented with various interfaces and patterns to expose the common LINQ development experience you've grown accustomed to with other providers. The main difference is that the data source is Twitter. Since LINQ to Twitter is open source, you also have a working example and will gain insight into how to create your own LINQ provider, should you ever have a need to do so. Additionally, by looking inside of the process used to build a LINQ provider, you'll gain a deeper understanding of how LINQ works across all providers.