In our previous article, we covered the main features that drove .NET to be the framework of choice for millions of developers around the world, and how it allows them to create solid applications for any platform, from desktop and mobile to the web and cloud.But the framework itself is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the .NET environment. Let's take a dive into the complementary technologies and tools that make working with .NET so beneficial.LINQLanguage Integrated Query (LINQ) is one of the things that makes working with .NET a breeze. It was introduced in .NET Framework 3.5 back in 2007.Integrating a querying language into any programming language is feasible through a set of constructs that provide powerful search capabilities within the programming language syntax. LINQ introduced new models for data manipulation. Such models can be extended to potentially query any type of data source.Figure 1 - LINQ architecture overviewThis set of .NET technologies make it easier for developers to work with data, as it treats the queries as a first-class programming language construct. This allows us to model a database through classes and then search the database, as well as insert, update or delete data. LINQ supports transactions, views and stored procedures. It also provides an easy way to integrate data validation and business logic rules.LINQ has a set of query operators which form the LINQ pattern to work with data. Calls to query methods can be chained together in one query, which enables queries to become arbitrarily complex.By using LINQ, we get the following advantages:Written code is simplified: any developer that already knows programming and a querying language like SQL will find LINQ quite intuitive. Syntax unification for querying any data source: you can search an XML or JSON document in the same way as a database, a DataSet, an in-memory collection, or any other remote or local data source that has LINQ support.Strengthens the connection between relational data and the object-oriented world: this is because querying becomes a first-class programming language construct. Queries can be strongly typed and developer tools can be used to create relational object diagrams.Shorter development time: by catching many errors at compile time it's easy to spot errors during development. There is also support for IntelliSense and debugging.Entity FrameworkEntity Framework (EF) is the Object Relational Mapping (ORM) technology developed by Microsoft that makes it easy to work with database data. It enables .NET developers to work with data using objects of domain-specific classes without focusing on the underlying database tables and columns where data is indeed stored. With EF, developers can work at a higher level of abstraction when processing data and can create and maintain data-oriented applications with less code compared to traditional applications.EF and LINQ make a great couple. It's really straightforward to compose database queries and EF has great support for LINQ operators that get translated to SQL code to be executed on the database server.Entity Framework main features include:Cross-platform: EF Core version is a cross-platform framework that can run on Windows, Linux and Mac.Modeling: EF creates an EDM (Entity Data Model) based on POCO (Plain Old CLR Object) entities with get/set properties of different data types. It uses this model when querying or saving entity data to the underlying database.Querying: EF allows us to use LINQ queries to retrieve and process data from the underlying database. The database provider will translate LINQ queries to the database-specific query language (e.g. SQL for a relational database). EF also allows us to execute raw SQL queries directly to the database.Change Tracking: EF keeps track of changes done to instances of entities (property values) that need to be submitted to the database.Saving: EF executes INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE commands to the database based on the changes that occurred to entities when you call the context SaveChanges() method. There's also an asynchronous SaveChangesAsync() version of this method.Concurrency: EF uses Optimistic Concurrency by default to protect overwriting changes made by another user since data was fetched from the database.Transactions: EF performs automatic transaction management while querying or saving data. It also provides options to customize transaction management.Caching: EF includes first-level caching out of the box. So, repeated querying will return data from the cache instead of hitting the database.Built-in Conventions: EF follows conventions over the configuration programming pattern, and includes a set of default rules which automatically configure the EF model.Configurations: EF allows us to configure the EF model by using data annotation attributes or Fluent API to override default conventions.Migrations: EF provides a set of migration commands that can be executed to create or manage the underlying database Schema.Entity Framework supports many database flavors, these being the main ones:SQL ServerSQL Server CompactOracleSQLitePostgreSQLMySQL and MariaDBCosmos DB SQL APIDB2FirebirdIn memory (for testing)A full list of compatible database providers can be found here.EF is also open source. We can find its GitHub repository here. There's also a specific Entity Framework Core repository here.IDEs: Visual Studio and Visual Studio CodeAn IDE is an Integrated Development Environment. When it comes to .NET, the most common options are the full-fledged Visual Studio and the lighter Visual Studio Code.Visual Studio (VS) is currently offered in 3 flavors: Visual Studio Community (free)Visual Studio ProfessionalVisual Studio Enterprise Visual Studio has been around since 1997, shortly before .NET was first introduced. VS 2002 was the first version with support for .NET 1.0 and since then it has evolved a lot and has full support for .NET native programming languages. The current version, Visual Studio 2019, supports lots of features. Amongst them it's worth mentioning the following ones:Best-in-class tools and services for any app and any platform.Great code search capabilitiesWise refactorings. Making your code easier to read and maintain is super easy in VS thanks to its integrated refactoring tools. For instance, you can extract a method or move a type with just a couple clicks. IntelliCode - it's IntelliSense on steroids that uses artificial intelligence to suggest code recommendations. The AI is trained\fed with 2,000 open-source projects on GitHub-each with over 100 stars-to generate its recommendations.Code cleanupIntegrated Test environment with Test explorerPair programming capabilitiesGit integrationLive Share allows sharing a codebase and its context with someone. We get instant bidirectional collaboration directly from within Visual Studio. The person on the other end can read, navigate, edit and debug a project that's being shared, and do so seamlessly and securely.Integrated code review using an extension.Visual Studio marketplace Extensions - allows new features to be added on top of VS.Visual Studio Code or just VS Code on the other hand is a lightweight IDE and supports many of the features of its big brother. It was first released in 2015. It's open-source and is used for cross-platform development. It has an active community that takes advantage of its extensibility points. Like VS, VS Code has an extension library that allows the developer to add languages, debuggers, and tools to support many different development workflows.One of its great features is that the developer can build code for Java, JavaScript, Go, Node.js, Python, C++, etc., through extensions. As you see, it has support for practically any programming language you throw at it, meaning it isn't only tied to .NET native languages.Visual Studio Code combines the simplicity of a source code editor with powerful developer tooling, like IntelliSense code completion and debugging. As the folks behind it say: "First and foremost, it is an editor that gets out of your way. The delightfully frictionless edit-build-debug cycle means less time fiddling with your environment, and more time executing on your ideas."It's highly customizable to fit any developer's needs.Visual Studio Code main features include:Available for macOS, Linux, and WindowsLight-weight (small installation size)Extensible: install just the things you need to useOut-of-the-box tools for developing for the web: JavaScript and TypeScript, JSX/React, HTML, CSS, SCSS, Less, and JSON.Edit, build, and debug with easePackage Manager (NuGet)NuGet is the .NET package manager. The NuGet Gallery is the central package repository used by all package authors and consumers. Its client is open-source. NuGet's main purpose is to make it easier to share, organize and keep track of libraries installed in a given .NET solution\project. It appeared in 2010 to solve a significant problem that developers always had: to share and reuse code (class libraries) across different solutions or projects.With NuGet, there's no need to store the libraries\packages' source-code in Git anymore. Package metadata is stored in the project definition file (.csproj for C# for example). When a .NET developer clones the Git repository which contains a solution with many projects or even a standalone project and builds it for the first time, Visual Studio will automatically restore (download all the dependencies/NuGet packages, described in the .csproj) right from the NuGet package source or your own defined package source. This saves a lot of storage space on any Git repository, makes it faster to clone the repo, and guarantees that you'll get the correct version for each library, preventing any version mismatch.Figure 2 - as of July 2021, the NuGet Gallery has 267,413 packages available to downloadVisual Studio has great UI integration to manage all the libraries supporting our solution's proje
