After almost one year of work and organization, I am very happy to share this project with you:
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/vlinq
The Visual Linq query builder is a Visual Studio 2008 addin. It's a designer that helps you create Linq to Sql queries in your application. Both C# and VB projects are supported.
As you will read it in this post, this project developed by interns is a prototype for a new kind of designers.
Please give us your feedbacks !!!
Project history
It is an academic project developed during a Microsoft France internship in collaboration with Microsoft Corporation.
I have been the 'local' manager and technical lead of the project. I wanted to create a VS designer using WPF for a long time and I had the idea of a query builder for Linq to Sql. Then came the opportunity to organize a 6 months long internship in collaboration with Ms Corp.
I have recruited two french students that I want to thank again today for their excellent job.
- Simon Ferquel from SupInfo who is now working in a french company (Winwise). You may know him from the time he was student as the author of a funny tool for Vista : myExposé.
- Johanna Piou from ISEN Toulon who is still student this year and who is well known for her brilliant Imagine Cup participation in the Interface Design category.
You can find the French description of the project here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/fr-fr/vcsharp/default.aspx (coming soon).
The project goal
Linq to Sql and Linq more generally speaking, is a new technology mainly based on language evolutions. As any new syntax, you have to take some time to get familiar with it.
The VLinq project as any designer helps you to build graphically Linq to Sql queries but we wanted to keep it visually very close from the code. The goal is not to hide the generated code but to make it visible in the designer. It's a kind of mix between a classical designer and a graphical intellisense.
VLinq also helps you grouping all queries at the same place allowing easy management (edit, add, remove) and previewing and testing.
Last goal: releasing the whole solution, including source code to share with you our experience about using WPF with VS2008 extensibility.
What do we release ?
The whole project has been developed using Visual Studio 2008 (betas then RTM) and Expression Blend. We provide the whole solution (binaries + source code). The solution contains a Setup project for a quick installation (msi file).
You can get all the stuff here: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/vlinq/ under the 'Releases' tab. (msi, quick reference guide, user documentation, webcast).