One of the cool new developer features in SharePoint 2010 is LINQ To SharePoint, which gives us the ability to write LINQ queries against SharePoint Lists and Libraries, bypassing the need to manually create CAML queries by hand and making for more readable and more maintainable code. However, this is in fact not the first implementation of a ‘LINQ To SharePoint’ provider – one exists that predates this 2010 release and was written by a (then) non-Microsoft employee and MVP Bart de Smet.
Today, Bart is a Microsoft employee who has worked on various exciting products and teams, mostly recent being the Reactive Extensions project. However, as an insider, he was able to share some of his knowledge and experience with the SharePoint team in building the ‘official’ LINQ To SharePoint for 2010. In this episode, we catch up with Bart to find out a bit about the Reactive Extensions and then jump into discussing his original LINQ To SharePoint implementation. It’s a dive into some of the underpinnings of LINQ providers, specifically assessing the capabilities of CAML and some of the challenges it raised. Towards the end, we also discuss Microsoft 2010 implementation and how it addresses these challenges.
Show Links:
Aptimize
Bart’s Blog
Reactive Extensions for .Net
Bart’s ‘Original’ LINQ To SharePoint CodePlex Page
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:17 — 25.7MB)
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