Is Microsoft going to kill LINQ to SQL (L2S)?  The rumors are that Entity Frameworks (EF) is the database plan of choice now and L2S is out the door.  There have been a few posts on the topics, here are a couple:

http://codebetter.com/blogs/ david.hayden/archive/2008/10/30/linq-to-sql-gets-kicked-to-the-curb-needs-a-good-home.aspx

http://ayende.com/Blog/archive/2008 /10/31/microsoft-kills-linq-to-sql.aspx

Personally, I think if they just added some method of change tracking to the entities and made disconnected work easier, then L2S would be pretty hot.  I do not like passing around connections (DataContext’s) to different layers and prefer to work in a disconnected form.  Of course, this means you either hit the database for the original data and then overwrite it with the modified data or you keep a copy of the original data manually (I have used this later method and there is a post here about it.

Of course, with L2S you must watch your queries very carefully.  If you do not pay attention, you might be generating tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of queries to your database from a single query.  SQL Profiler comes in real handy there.

From what I have seen about EF though, it appears it is geared for more substantial applications and could not be thought as lightweight unless you an extreme fantasy.  There needs to be a lightweight but yet truly functional database layer and L2S could be just the ticket with a few modifications.

Guess we will have to wait and see…