Question

For years i’ve been under the impression that with the advent of anonymous types in C#, e.g.:

// anon is compiled as an anonymous type
var anon = new { Name = "Terry", Age = 34 };

Linq to Sql is able to construct anonymous typed objects from a results set, e.g.:

Example (hypothetical syntax):

var activeUsers = 
        from u in ConnectionStrings:Northwind.Users
        where u.IsActive = 1
        select UserName, FullName, Email, Description

And now i can operate on this collection, e.g.:

foreach (var u in activeUsers)
{
    AddToListView(u.UserName, u.FullName, u.Email);
}

Is this simple, powerful, easy to use example a fantasy?

Answer 1

Linq to Sql requires a DataContext and associated database metadata before it can query a database.

It is also not able to “use” a web.config connection strings entry (as without static design-time metadata it cannot compile the query.