Editing ADO.NET (section)

=== LINQ to SQL ===
{{main|LINQ to SQL}}

LINQ to SQL (formerly called DLINQ) allows [[LINQ]] to be used to query Microsoft SQL Server databases, including SQL Server Compact databases. Since SQL Server data may reside on a remote server, and because SQL Server has its own query engine, it does not use the query engine of LINQ. Instead, the LINQ query is converted to a SQL query that is then sent to SQL Server for processing. Since SQL Server stores the data as relational data and LINQ works with data encapsulated in objects, the two representations must be mapped to one another. For this reason, LINQ to SQL also defines a mapping framework. The mapping is done by defining classes that correspond to the tables in the database, and containing all or a certain subset of the columns in the table as data members.