Creating a LINQ to Entities test application

Now, let's start exploring LINQ to Entities with some examples. We will apply the skills we are going to learn in this chapter and in Chapter 8, LINQ to Entities – Advanced Concepts and Features, to the data access layer of our WCF service, so that from the WCF service we can communicate with the database using LINQ to Entities instead of the raw ADO.NET data adapter.

First, we need to create a new project to test LINQ to Entities. Just follow these steps to create this test application:

1. Start Visual Studio, select the menu options FILE | New | Project…, and you will see the New Project dialog box. Do not open the LayerNorthwind solution (from the previous chapter), as in this chapter we will create a completely new solution and save it in a different location.

2. In the New Project window, specify Visual C# | Console Application as the project template, TestLINQToEntities as the project name, and C:\SOAwithWCFandEF\Projects\ as the location. Make sure...