Let’s Play, “Why did it do that?”

On my current project I decided to be flexible and allow the use of Linq to SQL to try to speed up development.  This will not be a large, heavily used database, so squeezing every drop of performance out of the database is not a big issue.  One of the reasons I agreed to it was so that I could see Linq to SQL in a real-world project and the queries generated.  Well, I saw my first “Why did it do that?” query.

Here’s a similar, simplified schema:

CREATE TABLE dbo.students
    (
    student_id INT IDENTITY(1,1) PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED,
    last_name VARCHAR(20),
    first_name VARCHAR(30),
    birth_date smalldatetime
    )
CREATE INDEX IX_last_name_first_name ON dbo.Students(last_name, first_name);

CREATE TABLE dbo.classes
    (
    class_id INT IDENTITY(1,1) PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED,
    class_name VARCHAR(25)
    )
CREATE INDEX IX_class_name ON dbo.classes(class_name);

CREATE TABLE dbo.student_classes
    (
    student_class_id INT IDENTITY(1,1) PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED,
    student_id INT REFERENCES dbo.students(student_id),
    class_id INT REFERENCES dbo.classes(class_id)
    )
CREATE UNIQUE INDEX UX_student_id_class_id ON dbo.student_classes(student_id, class_id)    

Here’s what Linq generated (modified to fit the new schema):

exec sp_executesql 
    N'SELECT 
        [t0].[student_ID] AS [Id], 
        [t0].[First_Name] AS [FirstName], 
        [t0].[Last_Name] AS [LastName], 
        [t1].[student_class_ID] AS [Id2], 
        [t1].[class_id] AS [ClassId], 
        [t1].[class_name] as [ClassName]
        (
            SELECT 
                COUNT(*)
            FROM 
                [dbo].[student_classes] AS [t3] INNER JOIN 
                [dbo].[classes] AS [t4] ON 
                    [t3].[class_id] = [t4].[class_id]
            WHERE 
                [t3].[Student_ID] = [t0].[Student_ID]
        ) AS [value]
    FROM 
        [dbo].[students] AS [t0] LEFT OUTER JOIN 
        (
        [dbo].[student_classes] AS [t1] INNER JOIN 
        [dbo].[classes] AS [t2] ON 
            [t1].[class_id] = [t2].[class_id]
        ) ON 
            [t1].[student_ID] = [t0].[student_ID]
    WHERE 
        ([t0].[Last_Name] LIKE @p0) AND 
        ([t0].[First_Name] LIKE @p1)
    ORDER BY 
        [t0].[student_ID], 
        [t1].[student_class_ID], 
        [t2].[class_id]', 
N'@p0 varchar(8000),@p1 varchar(8000)',
@p0 = 'Abb%', @p1 = 'Abb%'

Note the correlated sub-query to return the count of classes by student. This is not in the Linq query in .NET, but is added by the framework because of the one-to-many relationship between students and student_classes. Basically the student object contains an EntitySet of student_class objects and it looks like L2S needs to know the number of objects in the list. If this is needed you can return it by replacing the correlated sub-query with a CTE or derived table. Here’s an example of what I’d write:

SELECT
    S.student_id,
    S.last_name,
    S.first_name,
    SC.student_class_id,
    SC.class_id,
    C.class_id,
    C.class_name,
    CC.class_count
FROM
    dbo.students AS S LEFT JOIN 
    (
     dbo.student_classes AS SC JOIN
     dbo.classes AS C
        ON SC.class_id = C.class_id
    )
    ON S.student_id = SC.student_id LEFT JOIN
    (SELECT
        SC2.student_id,
        COUNT(SC2.student_class_id) AS class_count
     FROM
        dbo.student_classes AS SC2
     GROUP BY
        SC2.student_id) CC
        ON S.student_id = CC.student_id
WHERE
    S.last_name LIKE 'Abb%' AND
    S.first_name LIKE '%'
ORDER BY
    S.student_id,
    SC.student_class_id,
    C.class_id

This eliminates the correlated sub-query and eliminates a second scan of the classes table.  I’m still trying to understand why Linq needs the count.  Any other suggestions?