I do more and more exercise with Lambda but I do not figure out why sometime example use .AsQueryable(); that use the IQueryable and sometime it omit the .AsQueryable(); and use the IEnumerable.
I have read the MSDN but I do no see how "executing an expression tree" is an advantage over not.
Anyone can explain it to me?
IQueryable implements IEnumerable, so right off the bat, with IQueryable, you can do everything that you can do with IEnumerable. IQueryables deal with converting some lambda expression into query on the underlying data source - this could be a SQL database, or an object set.
Basically, you should usually not have to care one way or the other if it is an IQueryable, or an IEnumerable.
As a user, you generally shouldn't have to care, it's really about the implementor of the data source. If the data providers just implements IEnumerable, you are basically doing LINQ to objects execution, i.e. it's in memory operation on collections. IQueryable provides the data source the capability to translate the expression tree into an alternate representation for execution once the expression is executed (usually by enumeration), which is what Linq2Sql, Linq2Xml and Linq2Entities do.
The only time i can see the end user caring, is if they wish to inspect the Expression tree that would be executed, since IQueryable exposes Expression. Another use might be inspecting the Provider. But both of those scenarios should really be reserved for implementors of other query providers and want to transform the expression. The point of Linq is that you shouldn't have to care about the implementation of expression execution to be used.
I agree with Arne Claassen, there are cases when you need to think about the underlying implmentatoin provided by the data sources. For example check this blog post which shows how the SQL generated by IEnumerable and IQueryable are different in certain scenarios.
Related
What is the difference between JPAQuery and JPAQueryFactory?
And, When to use which?
According to the querydsl reference documentation:
Both JPAQuery and HibernateQuery implement the JPQLQuery interface.
For the examples of this chapter the queries are created via a JPAQueryFactory instance. JPAQueryFactory should be the preferred
option to obtain JPAQuery instances.
But, I could not understand clearly.
Can anyone explain it briefly?
What matters is that Hibernates query language (HQL) is a superset of JPA's query language (JPQL). Hibernate also has a special method for result set transformation and being able to iterate over scrollable result sets without the need to keep a reference to all records in memory. In order to take advantage of this extra functionality, the HQLTemplates and the HibernateHandler have to be used. The first is responsible for serializing the additional types of expressions, the second for the integration with Hibernates Query implementation. The HibernateHandler is actually obtained from the HQLTemplates as well, so all that remains is specifying HQLTemplates.
And in fact: a JPAQuery instantiated with HQLTemplates.INSTANCE for the Templates variable, behaves the same as a HibernateQuery. FWIW, if you provide an EntityManager instance with the construction of your JPAQuery, then the appropriate implementation for Templates is deduced for your ORM vendor automatically.
All JPAQueryFactory really is, is a factory method that binds the EntityManager and Templates variables for newly instantiated JPAQueries. This eliminates the need to pass these as a variable individually for each instantiation of a JPAQuery.
There is no need to use the JPAQueryFactory, but it could make your code easier to read. Furthermore, a lot of code examples on the QueryDSL website utilize the query factory, so it might make it easier to use these examples as snippets in your own code.
If this is a property implementation where Context is an Entity Framework DbContext and Tours is a DbSet...
public IQueryable ListQuery => Context.Tours;
... then the calling code has limited ability to continue the query. For example, I can't even call ToList() on the result.
How do I return an un-typed query, such that I can do things like Take and Skip on the result, without the calling code knowing what the type is?
I don't want the type to leak out of the interface, because then my data access code is tied to one EF model in particular.
I cast the result to IQueryable<object>. I'm not sure why that's allowable. Is it because its covariant?
My question is that how to call a function in LINQ query? e.g
source.Where(x=> double.Parse(x.Col1)==3)
or
source.Where(x=> AnyUserFunction(x.Col1)==true)
Basically my requirement is to check weather Col1 is a numeric value or not, but I occasionally need to call my User Defined functions as well.
The problem is that your Linq to Entities provider doesn't know how to translate your custom methods to SQL. The solution proposed by #teovankot is the easy way to solve this problem, but if you want to work with Linq to Objects I suggest you use AsEnumerable extension method instead ToList because AsEnumerable does not execute the query until you consult the data, it preserves deferred execution, but be careful, try to don't use AsEnumerable or ToList on the entire DbSet because you'd retrieve all rows of that table affecting your application's performance.
Now if you only want to check weather Col1 is a numeric value or not, another solution could be using SqlFunctions.IsNumeric method which is translated into native SQL:
using System.Data.Entity.SqlServer;
//...
source.Where(x=> SqlFunctions.IsNumeric(x.Col1)==1);
You can find another set of functions you can also call in the DbFunctions static class.SqlFunctions are SQL Server specific, whereas DbFunctions aren't.
You can't call user defined functions easy in linq to sql.
But you can do it after you get all your data from DB to your server. Like this:
source.ToList().Where(x=> AnyUserFunction(x.Col1)==true)
Note ToList() call. this will get all your data from DB so you basically working with linq to objects where you can easy use your user defined fucntions.
I understand how IEnumerable and IQueryable works. I just cannot imagine a situation where IEnumerable would be needed in entity framework when working with SQL database. I wonder if I can just discard IEnumerable in EF. Can you provide any useful example that shows IEnumerable could be more useful than IQueryable?
There are three situations that come to mind.
When EF cannot convert your query into a correct SQL statement - so you need to bring the results into memory to complete the computation.
When you need to perform operations that involve operators that do not convert to SQL.
When SQL server is slower at producing the computation than an in-memory calculation. Many times I have found that pulling all the data into memory is quicker than letting SQL to do it.
Provided a data source (as IQueryable) can be queried, then yes, use IQueryable - though you shouldn't be creating IQueryable instances or implementing it yourself, that's what EF is for. You will still need to use IEnumerable as method parameters or return types if you're using EF with external data-sources or other data that isn't queryable itself, such as JOINing an EF table with non-EF data.
For example, you'd have a return type as IEnumerable<T> if the data you're returning isn't queryable because you called AsEnumerable or ToList but you don't want to reveal implementation details - but I'd then prefer IReadOnlyList<T> in that case.
I have been reading when using LINQ to entites a query is of type IQueryable before it is processed but when the query has been processed, it's no longer an IQueryable, but an ObjectQuery.
In that case, is it correct to write methods from my layer (repository layer) to return IQueryable?
Do I need to cast?
Why would I want to return an ObjectQuery?
I'm coming from a LINQ to SQL background where things were always IQueryable but EF seems to have changed this.
Any help really appreciated.
My repositories always returns IQueryable. The reason for this is that IQueryable is not dependent on EF whereas ObjectQuery is. So if I want my other layers to be persistance ignorant I don't want to introduce dependency on ObjectQuery.
ObjectQuery is implementation of IQueryable with several additional features. First feature you will quickly discover is Include function which is need for eager loading of navigation properties (related entities). Second feature is EQL - entity query language. EQL is second way how you can query your conceptual model. It has similar syntax as SQL. You can write simple query as string, pass it to ObjectQuery constructor and execute query or use it in Linq-To-Entities.