Hot Rod LINQin'

Language INtegrated Query (LINQ) is one of the more prominent features of the next release of Visual Studio VS Orcas, now in Beta 1. Scott Swigart took the older March CTP version out for a spin in his recent video tutorial, although the techniques he demonstrates should apply just as well in the latest version.

Along with the VS Orcas Beta, lots of new related reference info is posting to MSDN. Beth Massi, Program Manager VS Core Community, posted a list on the VB Team blog listing some VB9-focused "Live from Redmond" webinars that started this week. The talks are led by members of each product team, so if you've got questions you'd like to ask directly, this is a great opportunity.

The series started on Tuesday, with VB Program Manager John Stallo conducting an overview of several new Orcas features including LINQ, N-Tier Data, WCF, and the Local Data Cache. For Wednesday morning's webcast, Kit George will dive deeper into LINQ. If you missed the live events, the presentations will be available in archive after the event. There were some technical difficulties with the archive of the first event, but I imagine that will be fixed soon.

The webinars will continue each Wednesday through May, at 9:00 a.m. PST: