LINQ Farm Connecting to a Database with LINQ to SQL

In this post I will show connectivity to Microsoft SQL Server 2005 or SQL Server Express from C# using LINQ. You can use the May 2006 CTP to run the code shown in this post. The May CTP installs on top of Visual Studio 2005. At the time of this writing, the March 2007 Orcas CTP is not yet out, but once it is out, then you should use it, or later versions of Orcas, as the preferred means to run LINQ queries. The screen shots shown in this post are taken from both the May CTP and pre-release versions of Orcas. Except for a few minor details, LINQ will look much the same whether you use the May CTP or an early build of Orcas.