LINQ to SQL Obsolete

The Language Integrated Query (LINQ) to SQL data access technology will be replaced by the ADO.NET Entity Framework and will not be recommended for development on future versions of the .NET Framework, according to Microsoft. LINQ to SQL enables application access to SQL Server via LINQ, a feature of languages such as C# that simplifies data access coding. Applications built on LINQ to SQL will continue to work but might not benefit from future Microsoft technologies. However, migration from LINQ to SQL is manual, and developers might want to wait for the next version of the Entity Framework before migrating.

Entity Framework Recommended

LINQ to SQL debuted with LINQ in the .NET Framework 3.5 in 2007. LINQ is a set of APIs and programming language features that enable data access queries to be written in programming languages such as C# and Visual Basic, rather than treated as text data. LINQ simplifies data access code and enables the developer to use the Visual Studio tools, such as the compiler and IntelliSense command completion, to help write queries. At its launch, LINQ supported a variety of data sources, including in-memory data objects and XML documents, and the Microsoft C# team had built a stopgap LINQ connector to SQL Server—LINQ to SQL.