LINQ or T-SQL?

DennisE · October 28th, 2011, 11:56 AM

The ASP .Net 4 in C# and VB book was great for me. It let me successfully complete my first web-based project, launch the next phase of my career, and should give me the tools I need for many more years.

I am starting a new project and have the great luxury of some time to work on the structure, plus a little experience to perhaps use this time wisely. I started looking at how the Microsoft Membership code works, and was thinking of writing T-SQL queries, coupled with C# Stored Procedure commands:

cmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure;

I started reviewing the WROX book "Beginning T-SQL". The first thing I noticed is that the author mentions LINQ as a reasonable alternative for "small" projects. It's quite something to pick up a book on something new, and find the approach I've been using mentioned in Chapter 1. (Yes, I always read Chapter 1!)

This is an "intranet" application with less than 20 users. It's replacing an Access database of about 15 MB (after 5 years of collecting data) with a Visual Basic 4 front end. It's a pretty small application.

Here's my question. For this project, is there any real advantage to T-SQL, or should I just go down the road with LINQ? How about the next project after this one, which should have about 100 users and a database about 2 to 4 times this size? When do the advantages of T-SQL become significant? It's always nice to expand my took kit. But I don't want to over-burden these projects with complexity they don't need.

Imar · October 29th, 2011, 09:36 AM

Hi there,

The size of the app or user base may not be a very important factor. A site like Stack Overflow, one of the most popular sites of the moment, runs on LINQ to SQL, showing that if you design well, L2S scales well.

For most scenarios, L2S or its bigger brother Entity Framework are excellent solutions. Stored procedures may come in handy when you have extensive database processing needs, or when you need tight security.

For what you're describing below, I think L2S or EF would work fine.

Cheers,

Imar

DennisE · October 29th, 2011, 11:36 AM

A smart man can master the unknown technology and make the project work. A wise man asks if the unknown technology is necessary or helpful. Thanks for the advice.