>Linq works well where the objects map easily to data fields (as per the usual examples - customers/orders etc) but for the graphics app I was working on I don't think it will help a lot. In my scenario the user can currently choose from about ten basic graphic objects to drop (in any combination) onto a canvas. Because the properties decribing the objects vary so widely it would probably require a seperate data table for each type of object (and if we invent another type that would mean another table). So I've simply made sure that each object is serializable and stored them as binary data in a varbinary field. This means I don't even need to track the weird and wonderful distortions users might apply to an object - just deserialize and there it is!

Cool serialization is something I need to look into one of these days, haven't had the need for it yet, but I will soon. I've done some in C but I'm not sure if it works the same in .NET