ADO.NET 3.0 Entity Framework Docs Redux

Subsequent to Tech•Ed 2006's DAT304, "Next Generation Data Access in .NET Applications with ADO.NET vNext," presentation by the ADO.NET team's Pablo Castro, these two documents about ADO.NET vNext and the Entity Framework reemerged on June 17, 2006 from 404 oblivion:

• The ADO.NET Entity Framework Overview (June 2006)
• Next-Generation Data Access: Making the Conceptual Level Real

Both had disappeared the day after their initial publication on May 10, 2006, as I noted in my "ADO.NET 3.0 Entity Framework Ephemera" post. Thanks to Erwyn Van Der Meer, Steve Eichert, and Fabrice Marguerie for reporting their reappearance. All three LINQ bloggers have posted comments about or analyses of these documents, which cover (per Fabrice):

• The Entity Data Model
• Entity SQL (eSQL)
• LINQ to Entities
• LINQ to DataSets
• LINQ to SQL (previously DLinq)

According to Erwyn's recollection of the originals, which I didn't see, there was no mention of LINQ, DLinq, or XLinq. The reincarnated white papers now pay lip-service to LINQ. Here's Pablo Castro's description of his TechEd presentation:

ADO.NET 1.0 presented a break-through in data-access technologies with explicit support for disconnected scenarios and a lightweight, high-performance provider model. In ADO.NET 2.0, the API was extended to enable more scenarios, perform faster and scale better. In this session we discuss what comes next. The next version of ADO.NET has both evolutionary aspects and serious innovations in it; from language-integrated query (LINQ) to object services to mapping, ADO.NET will bring simplification and great expression power to the Microsoft data platform enabling construction of sophisticated business applications and tools with less effort and more functionality.

Kent Tegels' blog post about Dave Campbell's DAT101 presentation, "Microsoft's Data Platform Vision," indicate it was at least as vague as its description:

Are you trying to anticipate upcoming trends shaping the industry? What are the secrets to success for the next decade in data management? In this session, Dave Campbell details Microsoft's data platform vision, as well as provides a clear roadmap to help you meet the demands created by the next data explosion and the next generation of data-driven applications.

However, Pablo Castro did demonstrate DLinq.

Luca Bolognese, LINQ's lead program manager, delivered DEV215, "Visual Studio: The .NET Language Integrated Query Framework Overview" with this description:

Modern applications operate on data in several different forms: Relational tables, XML documents, and in-memory objects. Each of these domains can have profound differences in semantics, data types, and capabilities, and much of the complexity in today's applications is the result of these mismatches. The Orcas release of Visual Studio aims to unify the programming models through language integrated query (LINQ) capabilities in C# and Visual Basic, a strongly typed data access framework, and an innovative API for manipulating and querying XML.

It's encouraging to see the ASP.NET team adopting LINQ technology in their Blinq prototype for "scaffolding" complete Web sites from the metadata of an SQL Server [Express] database. Technorati Tags: ADO.NET 3.0, ADO.NET vNext, Entity Framework, LINQ, LINQ to Entities, LINQ to DataSets, LINQ to SQL, Entity SQL, eSQL, DLinq, XLinq, Blinq, C# 3.0, VB 9.0, Orcas