In .NET 3.5 and Visual Basic 9, Microsoft added a number of features to make coding quicker and clearer.  In addition to LINQ, these features include anonymous types and the inclusion of XML as a native type.  With only 14 lines of code, we were able to extract data from a SQL Server database and convert it into an XML document.

There is so much more to LINQ than what we've covered here. This example should provide a good foundation for exploring LINQ even more.  There are a couple of references listed below with a wealth of information about LINQ.