Meet the Future of Data Head-on with Comega

first saw Comega about a year an a half ago when the lab that was developing it gave me a sneak preview and asked me for some feedback. The only feedback I could give at the time was "Wow!" Now, everybody can get access to this add-on to C# as Microsoft Research has released the preview for public consumption. What is it, you might ask? Comega is an experimental add-on to C# with the intent to make data a first-class citizen of the language. And it succeeds.

In this article you'll get a whistle-stop tour of some of the features that Comega adds to C#, and build an example application that uses some of these features!

Comega is a strongly-typed, data-oriented programming language intended to bridge the gap between semi-structured hierarchical data (XML), relational data (SQL), and the common type system (CTS—the root of all variable and type declaration .NET languages). It spans XML, SQL, and the CTS by generalizing how they are used. This is difficult to get your head around just reading about it—and best learned through practical and hands-on examples. A little later you will build an application that uses some of these features and gives you a taste for what you can do in Comega.