The LINQ project which will be part of the next version of Visual Studio (codename "Orcas") is set of extensions that make it possible to query data sources directly from the C# or VB.NET languages. LINQ extends .NET Framework with classes to represent queries and both C# and VB.NET language with features that make it possible to write these queries easily. It also includes libraries for using queries with the most common types of data sources like SQL database, DataSets and XML files. This article requires some basic knowledge of LINQ and C# 3.0, so I recommend looking at the LINQ Overview available from the official project web site before reading the article.

LINQ includes extensions for the C# and VB.NET, but there are no plans for supporting LINQ in C++/CLI. The goal of CLinq project is to allow using part of LINQ functionality from C++/CLI. Thanks to very powerful operator overloading mechanism in C++/CLI it is possible to enable using LINQ to SQL for accessing SQL databases in C++/CLI as well as some other LINQ uses.