Martin,

>Of course you may know some things from the inside that I don't know, but... Which Fox Team member was involved in the C Omega project? This project has been going on for years in Microsoft Research and it is where LINQ came from.

I think the real story is that Anders was working on some ideas for better data integration on the C# side -- perhaps this is where your Omega reference ties into the scenario. At the same time, some of the Fox team (under the direction of YAG's .NET Data team) were working on the "Zorro" project, bringing VFP-like querying into the VB world in some prototypes that illustrated what could be done.

(I know for a fact that several people outside of Microsoft saw some of these early "Zorro" prototypes done by the Fox guys, along with a glimpse of what the C# guys were working on.)

As Russell mentioned, YAG has previously said that there was a meeting of the minds that brought together both of these initiatives from both sides and led to the integration of them into what we now know as LINQ.

So, I think perhaps both you and JK are right. (I think John was in a pretty good position to know, BTW). :-)

Here is a blog post from me back in August 2005 that references an eWeek article about the "Zorro" team : http://talkingfox.blogspot.com/2005/08/someones-been-talking-eweek-reveals.html

A key quote from the eWeek article: And the team that has been working on the VB data integration capabilities has been referred to as the "Zorro" team inside Microsoft—in homage to the FoxPro ties, sources said. Zorro is Spanish for fox.