LINQ and XLinq (first impressions)

Like every other self-respecting-live-on-the-bleeding-edge-I-want-the-bits-as-soon-as-they-compile .NET geek I’ve been particularly interested in the information released at the PDC including LINQ and ATLAS. Today I spent a sligtly-longer-than usual lunch break playing around with XLinq. My first impressions are as follows:

  • Creating Xml is made much easier with the “compact“ syntax is nice. It seems like VB.NET gets to create “XML in-line“ like Cw does, but C# cannot.
  • A whole “other“ Xml namespace - System.Xml.Xlinq. More stuff to learn.
  • While XLinq querying provides the same “functionality“ as XPath/XQuery the syntax is totally different. It seems like the relational folks got something a lot closer to SQL in DLinq.

These are all just my impressions after a quick play. I have very fond memories of my experiments with Cw, and I’m glad these language features are going “mainstream”. I’d be interested to know what others impressions of these technologies (especially XLinq) are.