LINQ vs ADO.NET

[LukasMalik]

Hi all,

I am developing an win form application (C#) which uses database almost in every opperation.
Question is, what kind of "communication" with dbo would you suggest me?
Well, approximately 1/5 of application DataLayer is already writen with ADO.NET and I dont feel discomfortable if I have to write SQL Select ( or update, or exec stored proc etc) with ADO.NET, after already writen hundreds of this it does not take more than minutes.

Secondly, I have never used LINQ. I just wanna make sure that I didnt miss somethink very usefull and any breaking change. Better change 1/5 application Data Layer now than after months whole one......

[balabaster]

The advantage of LINQ is the ability to have hard typed access to tables/columns in your database within your code. It provides a lot of design-time functionality which is a dream and compiles down pretty much to the same code as your ADO.NET would (give or take) so it still builds an SQL query under the covers - it just provides the neat ability to reference tables, columns and data exactly as if you're coding to regular classes and methods. I personally think it's great, but I imagine there are people out there that think it's the worst invention ever. Each to their own.

[LukasMalik]

The advantage of LINQ is the ability to have hard typed access to tables/columns in your database within your code. It provides a lot of design-time functionality which is a dream and compiles down pretty much to the same code as your ADO.NET would (give or take) so it still builds an SQL query under the covers - it just provides the neat ability to reference tables, columns and data exactly as if you're coding to regular classes and methods. I personally think it's great, but I imagine there are people out there that think it's the worst invention ever. Each to their own.

I am not ortodox ADO.NET fanatic, I will probably start to use LINQ, but I have few questions still:

1) other dev group works on database which dynamicaly change until first beta version of application is released. After that no. of changes will decrease (I hope so :-) )
That means I have to still re-generate my database class using SqlMetal.exe? After every database change?
2) I have user controls with high usage which has DataSource property (type of 'object' which is converted into DataTable or DataSet). Lets imagine - in DataLayer I get result frm SQL LINQ query - var customers. Which type is it? Will I be able to convert it into DataTable?

Thanks a lot