Linq to SQL and Linq to Entities depend on creating dynamic SQL to do a lot of their work, specially when you have classes represent database tables in some fashion. However if the database(s) does not allow ad hoc SQL queries and everything has to go through stored procedures, I don’t see the big value of using L2Q or L2E if the developer has to write all the SP’s upfront to do all the work AND know that these are the all SPs that will ever be used in all scenarios in the app.
Views might alleviate the situation but if creating views need DBA permissions, it is still a hassle.
LINQ-to-SQL’s stored procedure implementations will still return your entity objects; you don’t get the super-incredible filtering capabilities that L2S provides by creating dynamic SQL, but you still can use the extensions to parse through.
Like I said, you can still add your schema and when your stored procs return those entities, you get that object relationship mapped already.
I still think it’s handy 🙂