Why E-SQL when I already have LINQ to Entities?

LINQ to Entities is a new version of LINQ, well suited for Entity Framework. But why do you need E-SQL when you already have LINQ to Entities available to you? LINQ to Entities queries are verified at the time of compilation. Therefore, it is not at all suited for building and executing dynamic queries. On the contrary, E-SQL queries are verified at runtime, so they can be used for building and executing dynamic queries.

You now have a new ADO.NET provider in E-SQL, which is a sophisticated query engine that can be used to query your data from the conceptual model. It should be noted, however, that both LINQ and E-SQL queries are converted into canonical command trees that are in turn translated into database-specific query statements based on the underlying database provider in use, as shown in the following diagram:

We will now take a quick look at the features of E-SQL before we delve deep into this language.

Features of E-SQL

These are the...