Query using LINQ

The most common and flexible method of composing a query is to use LINQ syntax with the EntityQuery.

DevForce LINQ is a comprehensive implementation with unique capabilities:

• can execute synchronously and asynchronously.
• applies to remote data source, local cache, or both simultaneously.
• works in 2-tier mode when the client has line-of-sight access to the database or in n-tier mode when a remote server mediates between clients and the database.
• can be composed statically inline with other code or dynamically to accommodate user-defined query criteria that can only be known at runtime.

Every valid EntityFramework LINQ query is also a valid DevForce LINQ query. The range and power of DevForce LINQ querying may best be appreciated by taking a tour of the EntityFramework's  MSDN "101 LINQ Samples" web page. Every sample works in DevForce, 2-tier or n-tier, whether sent to the database or applied to local cache.

Every EntityFramework entity type can be queried with DevForce LINQ: all forms of inheritance, complex types, anonymous types, all association cardinalities (including many-to-many).

The DevForce LINQ query story begins with EntityQuery.

The EntityQuery

DevForce provides the EntityQuery<T> class to support LINQ syntax. The EntityQuery<T> implements .NET's IQueryable<T> interface and offers a complete implementation of LINQ functionality, including multiple overloads for all of the following standard LINQ operators:

All, Any, Average, Cast, Concat, Contains, Count, DefaultIfEmpty, Distinct, ElementAt, Except, First, FirstOrDefault, GroupBy, Join, Last, LastOrDefault, OfType, OrderBy, OrderByDescending, Select, SelectMany, Single, SingleOrDefault, Skip, SkipWhile, Take, TakeWhile, ThenBy, ThenByDescending, Sum, Union and Where.

Because an EntityQuery is most commonly used to query an Entity Data Model, DevForce is subject to the same restrictions which the Entity Framework places on such queries.  For more information, see Supported and Unsupported LINQ Methods (LINQ to Entities).  

Note that while an EntityQuery may be restricted from running against the Entity Framework on the backend, the same query can always be executed locally against the EntityManager's cache regardless of any backend restrictions.  Similarly, POCO queries, are also not subject to these restrictions. This is why some of the operators listed above, such as ElementAt, Last, SkipWhile, and TakeWhile, among others, are still provided, even though they cannot be handled by the Entity Framework. In practice, these restrictions tend to be a minimal hindrance because there is usually another method or overload that can accomplish the same result.

Several additional DevForce-specific operators are offered as well, such as FirstOrNullEntity and support for building untyped LINQ queries dynamically.

EntityQuery basics

Entity queries, like all LINQ queries, can be composed, executed and enumerated in a variety of stepwise ways. Consider, for example, the following query:

The same query can also be written using LINQ method-based syntax as shown below:

Whether to use query or method syntax is your choice.  Both syntaxes provide the same functionality, with minor differences.  We generally use method, sometimes called fluent, syntax in our samples and snippets, but that's because it's the syntax we're most comfortable with.  If you're a VB developer, query syntax can be much easier to write and read.

The above returns an EntityQuery<Customer>. It's often easier when working with generic types (especially nested generic types), to use an implicitly typed variable, such as shown above.  This isn't required, and you can still use explicit type variables too.

Creating a query

You may have wondered in looking at the above samples what manager.Customers referred to, and why you could append LINQ methods to it.  When DevForce generates the code for your entity model it includes these helper properties on the EntityManager.  Here's what Customers looks like:

DevForce does this to make it easy to compose more complex LINQ queries without having to explicitly construct the EntityQuery from scratch every time.  You're not limited to using these helper properties, but most developers find them useful.   

Basic tasks

The customersQuery we showed above may look a bit daunting if you're new to LINQ.  Queries can be as simple or complex as you need.  Here are a few more samples of simple common queries.

Get all entities of a type

When you need to retrieve all instances of a type, all Employees for example, you need only provide a simple EntityQuery without restriction or selection methods:

Or in query syntax:

You can execute the query in any of the ways described below.  Remember that if there are potentially many instances of the type it's usually not a good idea to bring all of them into the entity cache.  If you have 10,000 products for example, you rarely need them all loaded into memory.

Simple property filter

You'll often want to retrieve a subset of entities based on filter criteria applied to simple properties of the entity.

For example, a query to retrieve all customers in the UK:

Query execution

As mentioned earlier, the DevForce EntityQuery<T> implements the IQueryable interface, which means that the execution of the query is deferred until one of the following operations is performed on the query

• ToList is called on the query. 
• The query is enumerated in a foreach statement.
• One of the EntityManager ExecuteQuery or ExecuteQueryAsync method overloads is called for the query.
• An immediate execution method is called on the query. These methods include First, Single, Count along with several others.
• The AsScalarAsync() method is called followed by a call to an immediate execution method.

Note that Silverlight applications, because of their asynchronous nature, can only make use of two of these mechanisms:

• Calling one of the ExecuteQueryAsync method overloads.
• Calling the AsScalarAsync() method on the query followed by a call to an immediate execution method.

In the example below the addition of a call to ToList() forces DevForce to execute the query immediately:

As does the FirstOrNullEntity call in the example below.

The same queries executed asynchronously, as would be required in Silverlight, would look like this.

and

In the above you may have noticed that instead of calling either the ExecuteQuery or ExecuteQueryAsync methods on the EntityManager, we called execute methods directly on the query itself.  Query extension methods such as Execute and ExecuteAsync give you additional flexibility in how you execute a query. These are usually equivalent to the EntityManager methods, except with one important distinction.  If a query is created without an EntityManager and executed with a query extension method, then that query will use the DefaultManager.

You can find more information on asynchronous queries here.

Logging & debugging

The DevForce debug log can be used to see more information regarding which queries are executed and when. Information about every query sent to the EntityServer will be written to the debug log.  You can also log the generated SQL for queries using the shouldLogSqlQueries attribute on the logging element in your config file.

Learn more

For more information on the basics of LINQ queries see 101 LINQ query examples and its corresponding code solution, the Query Explorer.