Chapter 8. LINQ to Entities: Advanced Concepts and Features

In the previous chapter, we learned some basic concepts and features of LINQ to Entities such as querying and updating databases with tables and views and changing loading behaviors by using the Include method.

In this chapter, we will learn some advanced features of LINQ to Entities such as stored procedure support, concurrency control, and transactional processing. After this chapter, we will rewrite the data access layer of our WCF service to utilize LINQ to Entities technology.

In this chapter we will cover:

• Calling a stored procedure

• Compiled queries

• Direct SQL

• Dynamic querying

• Inheritance support

• Concurrency control

• Transaction support

• Entity class validation

• Debugging LINQ to Entities programs