On Linq for SQL and POCO

I’m looking at the option of using Linq To SQL for persistence.

Basic assumptions:

• Entities should be POCOs
• I like Linq as query language
• I hate visible generated code
• Would rather avoid xml configurations

Today I’m using NHibernate (so 1 and 3 are set), and AR Attributes (so 4 is set). As for querying, I resort to hql (nice, yet too stringy), ICriteria (still stringy) and NHQG (cool, super cool, yet coupled with NH, while Linq is a “query everything” language)

I tried Linq for SQL (on a VS C# 2008 Express Beta2). No designer. Hand coded the entity, and have used the attributes for mapping.

First problem encountered: in order to make a column lazy, I need to change the underlying type to Link<MyOriginalType>, and then I can tell the context (using a LoadingOptions) about whether to load the lazy properties.

Couldn’t yet find a way to actually lazy load that property once the instance has already been loaded.

I much better like the way NH is handling things, with a runtime-generated proxy that takes care of lazy loading (among other stuff), so I get it without hassling my entities code.

Didn’t even mention First and Second Level Caches.

I guess I’d have to try and hop into NHibernate.Linq, and try to help Ayende with bringing it forward. That would mean diving into NH code, something I haven’t done for quite some time now …