LINQ to the rescue!

If you have ever had multiple data sources that you pull into DataTables, you know that you can use the .Merge function to combine the data. But, what if there are dupicates? What about sorting the merged data?

Well, using LINQ to data, you can use the power of LINQ without needing SQL Server or a database at all, for that matter. Here is a simple example using LINQ to data, to sort and pull only distinct records in the merged DataTable.

static void Main()
{
    var dtFirst = new DataTable();
    var dtSecond = new DataTable();

    dtFirst.Columns.Add("Value", Type.GetType("System.Int32"));
    dtSecond.Columns.Add("Value", Type.GetType("System.Int32"));

    var row = new object[1];

    for (var i = 25; i >= 0; i--)
    {
        row[0] = i;
        dtFirst.Rows.Add(row);
        row[0] = i+5;
        dtSecond.Rows.Add(row);
    }

    dtFirst.Merge(dtSecond);

    IEnumerable MyTable = dtFirst.AsEnumerable();

    var dtLinqData = (from
            MyRow
        in
            MyTable
        orderby
            MyRow.Field("Value")
        ascending
        select
            MyRow.Field("Value")).Distinct().ToArray();

    Console.WriteLine("Original Data");

    foreach (DataRow dr in dtFirst.Rows)
        Console.Write(dr["Value"] + " ");

    Console.WriteLine();
    Console.WriteLine("Linq Data");

    foreach (var dr in dtLinqData)
        Console.Write(dr + " ");

    Console.Read();
}