See below links for an intro to linq
What is Linq and what does it do?
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/using-linq-to-sql-part-1
Linq provides a mean of querying data, but you still need to provide a means of Linq accessing that data - be it through Linq2Sql classes, ADO, Entity Framework, etc.
I'm a fan of Entity Framework (EF) where you set up objects that represent your data, and use a context to populate those objects.
it could look something like this:
public class Table1 { public string FirstName { get; set; } public string SurName { get; set; } public DateTime DOB { get; set; } } public class Table1Repository { private readonly MyEntities _context; public Table1Repository() { this._context = new MyEntities(); } public IQueryable<Table1> Get() { return this._context.Table1; // in effect your "Select * from table1" } public IQueryable<Table1> GetById(DateTime dob) { return this._context.Table1.Where(w => w.DOB == dob); // pulls records with a dob matching param - using lambda here but there is also "query expression syntax" which looks more like sql }
}
Note that you're performing linq queries on the context that represents the data, not the database itself. Linq is very powerful, but you need to provide it a means of accessing data. Even if that data is as xml, a file, a database, whatever!
List<>by using.Where(). It has not much to do with databases actually.