Microsoft added lot of new technology features in .Net 3.0 / 3.5. LINQ is newly added feature of .Net. From the official LINQ home page, The LINQ Project is a codename for a set of extensions to the .NET Framework that encompass language-integrated query, set, and transform operations. Few days back I come into a situation where I need to reduce the hit count of a particular method*, which returns a collection class, based on an argument to the method. initially I played around select case,
if – else etc, but then I come to know that the parameters can be changed. So started with LINQ.

'Creating the collection
Dim oPersonCollection As New PersonCollection()
'Adding items to the collection
oPersonCollection.Add(New Person With {.Name = "Person1", .Age = 20})
oPersonCollection.Add(New Person With {.Name = "Person2", .Age = 26})
oPersonCollection.Add(New Person With {.Name = "Person3", .Age = 23})
oPersonCollection.Add(New Person With {.Name = "Person5", .Age = 22})
oPersonCollection.Add(New Person With {.Name = "Person7", .Age = 29})
oPersonCollection.Add(New Person With {.Name = "Person4", .Age = 25})
oPersonCollection.Add(New Person With {.Name = "Person9", .Age = 20})
'Querying the collection to get all Persons from the
'collection with Age >= 20 and Age = 20 And oPerson.Age <= 23
'Binding the list to Dropdown
Me.ComboBox1.DataSource = Query.ToList()

And the implementation of PersonCollection and Person class.

Public Class PersonCollection
Inherits List(Of Person)
'No Implementation Reqd. You can use a simple List or Collection.
End Class
'Simple Person class, with Name and Age Properties
Public Class Person
Private m_Name As String
Public Property Name() As String
Get
Return m_Name
End Get
Set(ByVal value As String)
m_Name = value
End Set
End Property
Private m_Age As Integer
Public Property Age() As Integer
Get
Return m_Age
End Get
Set(ByVal value As Integer)
m_Age = value
End Set
End Property
'To display the value, by directly binding to the listbox.
Public Overrides Function ToString() As String
Return m_Name & " with an age of " & m_Age
End Function
End Class

Also VB.Net contains support for XML too.

Links : Official LINQ Project Page

* For last few days I am working on a WPF Project, in the Role of “Performance optimizer”