>I was talking to someone the other day who
>has had a chance to look under the covers and he says it will be two more years before dot netters can start to do what we've been doing for the last 10 years. Even then it won't be nearly as elegant. It seems the C# guys just don't understand data.

Tsk, tsk... that's a cheap shot to say the least, John.

First off, it's years off - a lot will change between now and then. Looking at what the VB guys are *experimenting* with is very interesting and sure to have an effect on what hte C# team is doing as well.

I've seen a lot of VFP people gloating and saying that this is nothing new and we've been doing this for 10+ years in FoxPro/XBase. While some of that is true, LINQ will do a lot of things with many other structures than just cursors - it's going to revolutionize the way you work with list data in general not just data. Some of the query syntax goes way beyond what you can do with plain SQL statements as well. And don't forget the XML functionality in XLINK which also is going to have a profound impact on how you can interact with XML documents both from consumption and creation.

Sadly the thing that is probably most important DLINQ - which is the data integration functionality - is the technoloogy that looks least impressive at this point with sort of a half baked Entity Manager. But again, it's very early nad DLINQ is the most high level of the LINQ family and it needs a stable base to grow.

The way I look at it: Better late than never... <g>. Judging by the interest in the LINQ techology at PDC it's quite clear that this is a primary feature that most developers wish for... that message surely is not lost on Microsoft now.