LINQ Rocks

I'm becoming a convert. The new job is awesome, I'm loving Raleigh. But this new gig has me focusing on a subset of VB.Net (ADO.Net) that I've never had to dive into before. and it rocks.

LINQ to Entities is a small but durable subset of ado.net introduced in framework 3.5. It gives you separated OOP layers to run between a DB (or multiple db's) and the rest of your framework. You can define an EDMX file to obfuscate your data, and it will generate the XML to connect your business layer to. These become your objects (entities) for the entity framework.

I've always been inherently opposed to OOP layers, they just add complexity when it isn't really needed. You end up creating spaghetti code with LINQ to Entity, but it's not as bad as it could be. and once it's built, it's built. I'm becoming a convert.

Once your data layer is built it's done. This makes the front end extraction considerably easier. You write linq queries instead of T-SQL queries, which are a completely different syntax.

The ease of front end development and flexibility of the LINQ syntax are what's really making me turn over the leaf. In T-sql, I'm hooked on aggregates. I can do anything in t-sql, been writing it for years. I'm still at the bottom of the learning curve from the LINQ syntax. But using .Include's to create joins has me intrigued. I'm actually looking forward to learning more. which hasn't happened in a long time with vb.net.

Last day on the job

Well, it's good to be changing jobs. Today is my last day on this work from home job, and next wednesday I start the new gig with a software company in Raleigh, NC. The new job is all VB.Net web sites over SQL Server databases, hosted in the same environment. It's going to be nice to have something stable that isn't a pressure cooker environment where anything can be thrown at me.

Here's to new beginnings!