TEERA 2.0: Technology blog

On this blog post, ADO.NET team announced the dropping of the support and further development on LINQ to SQL. This is sad. Seems like MS’s done it again (My heart still aches over MS Site Server!) with the abandonment of its own product/technology in “Upgrade or Die” style.


Although I’m not a big LINQ to SQL user, I managed to ship two small website projects with it. I know a few who had invested far more time and resources on learning the technology. Personally I think it’s a great lightweight framework suitable for small to medium size project (according to Jeff Atwood, StackOverflow.com is built on LINQ to SQL).


“In .NET Framework 3.5 we released several LINQ providers, including LINQ to SQL which set the bar for a great programming model with LINQ over relational databases.  In .NET 3.5 SP1, we followed up that investment with the Entity Framework enabling developers to build more advanced scenarios and to use LINQ against any database including SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, MySQL, etc.“


So, it seems that Microsoft is suggesting developers to move on to Entity Framework. As they discontinued LINQ to SQL in .NET 3.5 SP1.  IMHO, the current version of EF stinks. The designer sucks and the modeling XML is bloated. It’s still far from matching NHibernate for medium to large websites, and overly complicate for small sites compare to LINQ-to-SQL. Maybe it’s because my first impression with EF didn’t go so well. As a general rule of thumb, if I follow the official tutorial and still can’t get a basic ‘HelloWorld’ running in 15 minutes, that framework is not usable. EF still have a lot to catch up if it’s going to become mainstream ORM.


The feedback from the community have been quite negative, see what people say on Ayende and David Hayden’s blogs.Â


“We are listening to customers regarding LINQ to SQL and will continue to evolve the product based on feedback we receive from the community as well.“


Listening to customers? They must either be deaf or doesn’t really mean it.