I mean, you're definitely still writing a query in this case, just using a lazy-loading C# interface.

An ORM in the traditional sense abstracts the details of the query itself fully away in favor of an object-oriented interface.

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fabian2k a day ago | parent [-]

EF Core does not lazy load by default. You have to explicitly include relations if you want them on an entity. You can enable lazy loading, but in the default configuration you usually don't have the N+1 problem.

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entropicdrifter a day ago | parent [-]

Isn't Linq a lazy-loading interface by default? The example they gave was a Linq query.

I'm not a C# user in my professional life so I'm happy to be corrected, BTW, just citing the source of my misinterpretation

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fabian2k a day ago | parent [-]

Yes, but in this context this just means that until you call ToList()/ToListAsync() you have an IQueryable. That represents a query, but isn't executed yet. Only at the point where you call a method like ToList (in this case First() is the relevant one) is the actual DB query performed.

The LINQ query in the comment above would only execute a single query like "SELECT name FROM users WHERE id = 123 LIMIT 1;" and would not even fetch the full entity, only the name.

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entropicdrifter a day ago | parent [-]

Right, which was my point. They used Linq to get around the limitations of an ORM more-so than using an ORM itself (by fetching an entity and accessing its 'field'). They're evading the N+1 problem by writing a query by hand still, just not in SQL itself.

The bit about lazy loading was a bit of a side-note more than my main point.

	▲	fabian2k a day ago \| parent [-]
		But using LINQ to query stuff is a core part of this ORM. And even if you access the full entity, it won't do an N+1 in the default configuration. You have to explicitly call Include() on any relation you want to fetch and it'll either fetch all of them with one query or do one query per relation type. There's a different footgun here with AsSingleQuery() and AsSplitQuery(), but that's a separate topic.