Visual Basic 2015 Unleashed

Querying EDMs with Entity SQL

LINQ to Entities is not the only way to query data exposed by EDMs. An important alternative named Entity SQL enables you to query entity data models by providing both the ability to send SQL instructions to the data source and to treat query results as managed entities. To accomplish this, the DbSet class exposes a method named SqlQuery that queries the EDM via the specified set of SQL instructions. The following example shows how you can retrieve a list of products for the Grains/Cereals category in Northwind, sorting the result by the product name:

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Sub EntitySQLDemo()    Try      Dim grainProducts = northwindContext.Products.      SqlQuery("SELECT * FROM PRODUCTS WHERE " & _              "CATEGORYID='5' ...