If you watch the ADO.NET team’s blog then you may have seen the post from today from Zlatko Michailov (Program Manager, ADO.NET).  Here are the highlights from his post:

In this Entity SQL (eSQL) post he discusses:

    •  what Entity SQL is
    • a brief example of how to use it to retrieve a hierarchical set of parent-children data
      • (Categories and their respective Products)
      •  No join syntax necessary!
    • an example Connection String for the EntityClient provider
    • how the EntityClient returns a common DbDataReader so we can create and fill our own classes from it
    • that this uses the well known ADO.NET pattern of Connection, Command, Parameter and DataReader classes
      • class names are prefixed with “Entity”
    • that the next Orcas release should have this functionality
      • however, he explains that it will not yet be able to use DML (aka no INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE)

There are a lot of features I am looking forward to in the next Orcas CTP (hopefully a February CTP and not a March one). I have high hopes for the future with features like Entity SQL, LINQ to SQL, LINQ TO DataSet, EDM, and LINQ to Entities. Kudos to the ADO.NET team  for taking this direction!