I did a talk yesterday at TechEd Hong Kong on ADO.NET vNext. Most of them just wanted to know what ADO.NET vNext was about. Short and sweet. Here goes...

There are two main new features:
1. Entity data model (EDM) - a mapping of objects over relational database to bring data access to a higher level of abstraction. No longer do you need to code to the DBMS schema, only to the entity schema. Think of it as a new data source.
2. Entity SQL - a new query language, SQL plus extensions to query against the entity data model (EDM). A bit richer than SQL, but SQL-like.

And some integration pieces:
1. An ADO.NET provider over the EDM (the MapProvider). Uses ESQL queries.
2. An ObjectServices layer over EDM. Reminiscent of ObjectSpaces (at least to me). Uses Query<T> and an ObjectContext.
3. An integration piece that allows LINQ over the EDM. "LINQ to Entities".

LINQ for Entities joins:
  LINQ to Objects
  LINQ to SQL (was: DLINQ)
  LINQ to XML (was: XLINQ)
  LINQ to DataSets
  PLINQ (parallel LINQ)

That's all folks.