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LINQ To Entities, SQL and Performance: Get All Public Gallery Items That Have No Parent Album

The document discusses LINQ to Entities queries and the generated SQL. It provides two examples of LINQ queries for retrieving gallery items from a database: 1) A query that returns all items with no parent album, which generates complex SQL, and 2) A query that returns only album items with no parent, generating simpler SQL. It emphasizes the importance of writing LINQ queries that use a minimal set of data to improve performance.

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Teffy Lavado Gomez
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90 views3 pages

LINQ To Entities, SQL and Performance: Get All Public Gallery Items That Have No Parent Album

The document discusses LINQ to Entities queries and the generated SQL. It provides two examples of LINQ queries for retrieving gallery items from a database: 1) A query that returns all items with no parent album, which generates complex SQL, and 2) A query that returns only album items with no parent, generating simpler SQL. It emphasizes the importance of writing LINQ queries that use a minimal set of data to improve performance.

Uploaded by

Teffy Lavado Gomez
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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LINQ To Entities, SQL and

performance
GUNNAR | ENTITY FRAMEWORK, MSSQL, VISUAL STUDIO | 0
I have introduced my photo gallery building process in couple of postings. As my
galleryuses Entity Framework 4.0 it is good source for some internal processing that takes
place inside Entity Framework. In this posting I will show you some LINQ To Entities
queries and SQL that is generated for them. I added also some thoughts about
performance.
My gallery model is shown here with database structure.

Class diagram of gallery Database structure of gallery
Get all public gallery items that have no parent
album
First example shows LINQ query that returns all gallery items that have no parent album. I
can use this query for gallery main page by example.

query = from g in context.GalleryItems
where g.ParentAlbum == null &&
g.Visible
select g;

This query produces the following SQL query. Take a closer look at it and see how
inheritance hierarchy is handled here.

SELECT
1 AS [C1],
CASE
WHEN ([UnionAll1].[C1] = 1)
THEN 0X0X
ELSE 0X1X
END AS [C2],
[UnionAll1].[gallery_item_id] AS [C3],
[Extent3].[title] AS [title],
[Extent3].[description] AS [description],
[Extent3].[visible] AS [visible],
CASE
WHEN ([UnionAll1].[C1] = 1)
THEN CAST(NULL AS varchar(1))
ELSE [UnionAll1].[file_name]
END AS [C4],
CASE
WHEN ([UnionAll1].[C1] = 1)
THEN CAST(NULL AS bit)
ELSE [UnionAll1].[gallery_thumb]
END AS [C5],
[Extent3].[parent_album_id] AS [parent_album_id]
FROM (
SELECT
[Extent1].[gallery_item_id] AS [gallery_item_id],
[Extent1].[file_name] AS [file_name],
[Extent1].[gallery_thumb] AS [gallery_thumb],
cast(0 as bit) AS [C1]
FROM
[dbo].[photo] AS [Extent1]
UNION ALL
SELECT
[Extent2].[gallery_item_id] AS [gallery_item_id],
CAST(NULL AS varchar(1)) AS [C1],
CAST(NULL AS bit) AS [C2],
cast(1 as bit) AS [C3]
FROM
[dbo].[album] AS [Extent2]
) AS [UnionAll1]
INNER JOIN
[dbo].[gallery_item] AS [Extent3] ON
[UnionAll1].[gallery_item_id] = [Extent3].[gallery_item_id]
WHERE
([Extent3].[visible] = 1) AND
([Extent3].[parent_album_id] IS NULL)

Get all top level galleries
Well I have one simple rule in my gallery all gallery items that are not albums must
have parent album. Query shown above returns always only Album type objects. Lets say
now in LINQ To Entities query that we need only albums to be searched.

query = from g in context.GalleryItems.OfType<Album>()
where g.ParentAlbum == null &&
g.Visible
select g;

This is the query that is produced by Entity Framework.

SELECT
1 AS [C1],
0X0X AS [C2],
[Extent1].[gallery_item_id] AS [gallery_item_id],
[Extent2].[title] AS [title],
[Extent2].[description] AS [description],
[Extent2].[visible] AS [visible],
[Extent2].[parent_album_id] AS [parent_album_id]
FROM
[dbo].[album] AS [Extent1]
INNER JOIN [dbo].[gallery_item] AS [Extent2]
ON [Extent1].[gallery_item_id] = [Extent2].[gallery_item_id]
WHERE
([Extent2].[visible] = 1) AND
([Extent2].[parent_album_id] IS NULL)

We can see that this query is not so complex than previous one. It is shorter and doesnt
have any complex parts like unions and from clauses that contain sub-query.
Getting better performance
Two examples above showed us very well how same thing can be done in more that one
way. First example produced long and complex SQL-query while second example
produced short and simple query. Both of them return exactly the same results.
When writing LINQ To Entities queries it is very good idea to make sure that queries use
minimal set of data. If we have 1.000 albums and 100.000 photos then second query takes
less time to execute because it contains no selects or joins to photos table.

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