Programming Visual Basic 2008

Chapter 17. LINQ

Many years ago my TV’s remote control died. I had received this TV secondhand from a college-student friend of mine—that should tell you about the quality of the set—and it was already a few years old. But I could still watch Gilligan’s Island, so why complain? But when I contacted the manufacturer to get a replacement remote, they told me it was going to cost 75 bucks! The TV didn’t cost anywhere near that, and I’m sure Gilligan’s Island cost even less to produce.

The TV was pretty much useless without a remote control, so I went out and bought a universal remote control. These handy devices have the infrared codes for most common television manufacturers built right into the circuitry. Simply scan through all of the codes to find your TV set, and in a matter of minutes—and this demonstrates the modern miracle that is electronics—you will still not have the functionality you had with your original remote. I did lose all use of the closed-captioning system, but the power, channel, and volume buttons seemed to work.

Despite its deficiencies, the universal remote could control a TV, a VCR, and a DVD player, all through a common set of buttons. Imagine a universal remote control for your Visual Basic development. Well, stop imagining and start grabbing that TV Guide: Visual Basic is now empowered with LINQ, a new feature in Visual Basic 2008 that lets you query unrelated data sources using a common syntax.

What Is LINQ?

LINQ, short for Language Integrated Query, is not ...