LINQ enables you to query data from a wide variety of data sources, directly from your programming
code. LINQ is to .NET programming what SQL is to relational databases. With straightforward,
declarative syntax you can query collections for objects that match your criteria.
LINQ is not just an add-on that is part of the .NET Framework. On the contrary, LINQ has been
designed and implemented as a true part of the programming languages in .NET. This means that
LINQ is truly integrated into .NET, giving you a unifi ed way to query data, regardless of where that
data comes from. In addition, because it is integrated into the language and not in a certain project
type, LINQ is available in all kinds of projects, including web applications, Windows Forms applications,
Console applications, and so on. To help developers get familiar with LINQ, its syntax is
closely modeled after SQL, the most popular query language for relational databases. This means
that LINQ has keywords such as Select, From, and Where to get data from a data source.
To give you an idea of what a LINQ query looks like, here’s a quick example that shows a list of
Wrox authors whose names contain the capital letter