From the Visual Studio Data Team blog ... At the PDC Microsoft announced LINQ (Language Independant Query) Framework. This gives you the ability to use a SQL-like language on your collections (anything IEnumerable). The example from the blog is:
Dim SmallCountries = Select Country _
From Country In Countries _
Where Country.Population < 1000000
This is certainly an interesting option for collections. This will make it much easier to cache data on the client side and use it in a flexible manner. I've been hearing for years that we're just about to see the end of relational databases and OO databases are the wave of the future. Instead we're looking at a relationalal “language” coming to an OO environment. Ha!
UPDATE: The homepage for the LINQ Project.