Adding LINQ to Visual Studio: Does this change everything?

BetaNews | at | by Mike

For over a decade, database developers have been begging for a kind of bridge that enables procedural language programs to access relational databases relationally. Now that bridge is coming. But are developers ready for LINQ? We asked Microsoft's Visual Studio general manager, Jason Zander.

The first genuine effort to create a uniform set of database drivers for Windows came in 1988, when an independent firm started as a consultancy called Pioneer Software launched a product and an idea called Q+E -- a tool for linking its own database editor, and later Microsoft applications such as Excel, to any number of existing databases through stand-alone providers. It was indeed a revolutionary concept, and it gave birth to a never-equaled database connectivity standard called ODBC.