Devart Forums

Hello,

I've been using the LINQ support in dotConnect for Oracle for quite some time now.

I need to have the ability to connect my application to a number of different database types without making any changes to my code. All my DB access is performed through LINQ. I'm particular interested in switching between Oracle & MS SQL Server.

In theory, this should be an easy task as the LINQ code is not depended on the type of the database.

In practice though, i see some potential pitfalls. For starters, there is no LINQ to SQL support in dotConnect for SQLServer! And before anyone says that the Microsoft implementation will do just fine and there is no need for such a thing, i will mention that there is a number of Devart extensions that are implemented in dotConnect for Oracle and not available in Microsoft implementation. For instance, one of my favorite is the DataContext.Query method that gets an SQL string and returns an IQueryable. This method is used in my application in a large number of places. How i'm i supposed to go without it in an SQL Server installation?

There is no LINQ to SQL support in dotConnect for SQL Server.
However, we are working on LinqConnect - a product that will integrate our LINQ support.
It will have SQL Server support. Some other features:

• ValueType support;
• Key generators;
• Query Caching;
• Possibility to generate DataContext without attributes.

It's seems a cool product!

Can we have at least a far estimate on the release date?

We plan to release the Beta version of LinqConnect in a month or so.

Devart LinqConnect Beta is available for download:
http://www.devart.com/news/2010/linqconnect100b.html

Do in need to remove dotConnect for Oracle in order to install this?

Unfortunately, LinqConnect is not compatible with the current version of dotConnects.
But LinqConnect contains Express versions of all providers and LINQ support for all of them.