Querying in Entity Framework

SelectMany in Entity Framework is an operator which flattens out the collection of collections into one single collection of objects. It is a very useful operator with many use cases.

Include method in Entity Framework has two overloads. One of which takes navigation property as a string. The other one is Include lambda method. The Include Lambda method is an extension method from the namespace System.Data.Entity. In this tutorial, we look at include method, and learn how to load entities from multiple levels and multiple tables.

Explicit Loading is a technique we query and load the related entities with an explicit call. Explicit loading works very similar to Lazy Loading, but the loading of the related entities happens only after an explicit call. The loading only when we invoke the Load method of the related entity’s DBEntityEntry object. In eager loading, we query the related entities along with the main entity in a single Query. In Lazy loading, EF loads the load related entities whenever we access the related Property.

Lazy loading in Entity Framework is the technique where the Entity Framework delays the loading of an entity or collection of entities until the time application actually needs it. In this tutorial, we learn about lazy loading. The difference between lazy loading and eager loading. How it works. How to disable it for all entities, for a specific entity or to a specific query.