Five Things the IT Manager Should Know About Microsoft's LINQ

Hey, this is an excellent case study by John Paul Mueller

You may not have heard about Microsoft's new brainchild, Language Integrated Query (LINQ). If you did hear about it, you may have yawned and put it down as yet another new technology searching for a requirement.
However, LINQ is different from most new technologies because it really can do everything it says it can. After working with LINQ for nearly a year, I've found that LINQ hasn't disappointed me, as have so many other technologies I've tried. LINQ is incredibly easy to use and quite reliable. The fact that I'm not alone in that sentiment is attested to by the large number of third-party add-ons created by other developers who feel the way I do about LINQ.
If you haven't encountered LINQ before, here's the straight-up definition. LINQ is a kind of query language, sort of the same as SQL, but the syntax is a little different. The basic idea is that you ask a question (or rather, your application does) and LINQ provides the answer from the data source you specify. That data source may not be a straight-up database. For example, if you ask LINQ which employees are in the accounting department and you supply Active Directory as the data source, the LINQ gets the answer for you from Active Directory.
Plenty has been written to explain LINQ to software developers. Here, I explain the important points for IT managers to understand.


1. Developers Can Access New Technologies Without Knowing Much About Them


A primary LINQ benefit is in reusability. A complex query you create to access objects also works with Active Directory, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, or a Web service; developers don't have to keep learning new techniques to use LINQ.
The basic LINQ setup comes with access for all of the data sources you might expect: data objects, SQL Server databases, XML and DataSets. However, if you stop there, you're missing LINQ's big picture. You can access a wealth of other data sources by obtaining a third-party provider—that is, LINQ add-ons, written by someone who isn't affiliated with Microsoft (and there are a ton of them). You can find common data sources, such as Active Directory, and uncommon data sources, such as Resource Description Framework (RDF).

To access data sources other than those the programming environment natively supports with most technologies, you have to jump through hoops or work through odd programming scenarios. If you make a change, a whole bunch of code usually has to change. With LINQ, you use the same query all the time. That simplifies the development process considerably, particularly for a programmer who's new to a project and hasn't made friends with the team's DBAs yet. Need a slightly techie example? Let's say, for the sake of simplicity, that you start with a C# string array like this:




To find all the strings that are more than three characters in length, you use a query like this:



In this case, ThisQuery is the output from the query process. You don't define an actual type because LINQ takes care of that for you; instead, you use var as the data type. The code uses StringValue to hold the individual data values from QueryString that match the where condition StringValue.Length > 3. The select portion of the query merely tells what to choose from the data source. Now, here's the really neat part. You can use that same query to retrieve data from an RDF or from Active Directory. If you have a provider for the data source, you can get to the data, using the same code. How cool is that?
Don't think that LINQ is limited to safe open-source projects or to Microsoft-specific data sources, either. LINQ works just fine with MySQL, as well as with a whole world of additional LINQ data sources.
You might assume that LINQ queries can't handle complex situations. The example in this section gives you a good idea where someone discovering LINQ will begin. However, LINQ queries, just like SQL queries, can become somewhat complex as you add data sources and output requirements. The learning curve to those complex queries is a gentle one, but even so, LINQ can become complex (like any other technology) as you ask it to do more work.



2. Developers Can Create Complete Applications With Less Code

Initially, I was leery of Microsoft's claim that LINQ would produce applications using fewer lines of code. I have seen way too many solutions that failed to fulfill that promise. I didn't change my mind until I started creating SQL Server queries with LINQ. But lo and behold, it took a single line of code for the query with LINQ, when previous programming used to require eight lines to accomplish the same thing.
You do have to add two more lines of code to create a data source object to use in the LINQ query, but you have to do that when working with .Net applications anyway, so you aren't losing anything.
You may be thinking that you don't get something for nothing. You're right. LINQ requires that the developer supply a provider, just as when accessing a database in Visual Studio. The provider acts as an intermediary between the data source and LINQ. Consequently, LINQ reuses code to achieve a result. The point is: Unless you need to access a custom data source, the developers don't write the provider code. That means that your development staff writes less code overall because the provider contains much of the code you used to write by hand. Fewer lines of code mean fewer opportunities for errors to creep in. And that's less work for your QA department.


3. Developers Can Develop Applications in Less Time and With Fewer Errors

LINQ makes code easier to understand. (At least, it's easier for programmers to understand. Nontechnical managers may not find it quite as transparent!) It relies on a SQL-like syntax that many developers already understand quite well. As with SQL, you specify only what you want as output—LINQ takes care of determining how to get that output for you based on the provider you specify. When you combine writing less code with a simpler coding environment, you get an application that requires less time to create.
The LINQ applications you create also should contain fewer errors. The developer who created the data source provider has already debugged and optimized it for use with LINQ. Because the developers write fewer lines of code and because each line of that code relies on basically the same structure, it's easy to produce applications with fewer errors at the outset.
The LINQ debugging functionality from Microsoft also makes the debugging process exceptionally easy. You can watch each query grab every bit of information in the result if you like. Microsoft really did do something right this time.
That doesn't mean everything is always perfect. One potential time sink with third-party providers is that some don't embrace all of the LINQ features. If there is a potential for errors today, it's because the third-party provider you use isn't quite complete.
LINQ has a number of methods to help a developer create a complex query. If a third-party provider doesn't support all these methods, the developer has to find ways around the omissions. Microsoft needs to create a program for authenticating these third-party providers, ensuring that the provider is complete, and giving the vendor a seal or other recognition when it passes. Even so, the worst third-party provider that I've used has enough functionality to create any query that most developers need.


4. Combine Data Sources without Resorting to Odd Programming Tricks

Developers will love LINQ's ability to combine data from multiple data sources in the same query. So will the managers who wish that developers could finish projects faster, particularly when those projects interact with other Microsoft products and services.
For example, say you want to locate all the employees who work in a particular building on the office campus, and then look for those employees in a payroll database. Using LINQ, you can create a single query that takes the output from Active Directory and applies it to a SQL Server database query. Likewise, it's possible to combine a SQL Server query with a MySQL query or to add a Web service query to a product search in RDF. The possibilities are endless.



5. Get New Developers Working Faster

One problem for new developers is that technology has evolved in a big way over the years. When I started writing code, all I needed to do something interesting was write a few easily understood BASIC statements. Five or six lines of code could at least display a set of lines on the screen. Today, a new developer has to jump through all kinds of terrifying hoops to build even a simple application. If the new developer doesn't know the innermost secrets of objects, forget it; trying to create any kind of application is a lost cause. Even if the developer has plenty of experience, bringing a new person on board requires a fair amount of time invested in learning every nuance of her new environment. LINQ won't solve every problem in that steep ramp-time, but it certainly can help.
LINQ helps you take a step back and get the new developer working faster. A new developer who can do something interesting and useful within a day or two of reporting for work is significantly happier and more productive. Productive developers spell great applications in less time. There isn't any secret here. LINQ simply removes some of the complexity of programming by relying on a provider to do all the heavy lifting. All the developer needs to know is what should appear as output, not how to get it.