31 oktober 2006

Progress on Linq in .NET Framework 3.5

Microsoft has released the September 2006 CTP of Visual Studio “Orcas” as an image for Virtual PC 2004 (go get VPC 2004 SP1, it’s free). This image contains an installed version of VS2005 “Orcas” and SQL Server 2005 on Windows Server 2003. I have heard of people who where able to download an installable version of Orcas, but was unable to find one myself.

The OS on the VPC image has the .NET Framework 3.5 installed (besides 1.1, 2.0 and 3.0). It shows the following contents:

Contentsnetfx35sepctp

You can clearly see the two new language compilers for C# 3.0 and VB 9.0. There are two green bit assemblies:

  • System.AddIn.Contract.dll (for Office Add-ins, I presume)
  • System.Core.dll as a replacement of the original System.Query.dll

When you take a look inside System.Core.dll you can see the Sequence and Queryable classes and most of the other base Linq classes and interfaces. However, there is no sign of any of the Linq to XML, Linq to SQL or Linq to DataSets! Apparently the “native” integration with Orcas is nowhere near as far as the May 2006 CTP was. System.Core also has some security enhancements.

The preview of Orcas shows the progress made on the integration of Linq in the IDE since the May 2006 CTP. Uhm, progress? Check the picture for a rather arbitrary demo I tried to get to work.

Linqnotimplemented

There are a couple of things that are implemented for C# 3.0 language support:

“Partial C# 3.0 Language Support: This CTP implements some of the new language features of C# 3.0

  • Local variable type interface (Nice typo on the interface, instead of inference :)
  • Lambda expressions
  • Object initializers”

The next CTP should bring more.

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