LINQ Interview QuestionsWhat is LINQ?Explain the main benefits of LINQWhat are the different types of LINQ?What is the difference between LINQ to Objects and LINQ to SQL?What are different methods to write LINQ Query in C#?Explain the concept of deferred loading in LINQ to SQL.What is eager loading in LINQ?What is lazy loading in LINQ?Can you disable lazy/deferred loading?What is explicit loading in LINQ?What is IQueryable in LINQ?What is the difference between IQueryable and IEnumerable?What are lambda expressions in LINQ?What is Can we use ref and out paramters in lambda expression? if declared outside?What is LINQ provider and explain different types of LINQ providers?What are advantages of LINQ over DataSet?What is the difference between LINQ and stored procedures?What are the disadvantages of LINQ over stored procedure?Difference between ADO.Net and LINQ to SQL?How can you handle concurrency in LINQ to SQL?How can you handle concurrency at field level in LINQ to SQL?What is the purpose of "Any" operator in LINQ?What is the purpose of "All" operator in LINQ?What is the difference between "Any" and "All" operators in LINQ?What is the purpose of "Contains" operator in LINQ?What is the difference between "Any" and "Contains" operators in LINQ?What is the purpose of "Count" operator in LINQ?What is the purpose of "Min" operator in LINQ?What is the purpose of "Max" operator in LINQ?What is the purpose of "Sum" operator in LINQ?What is the purpose of "Average" operator in LINQ?What is the purpose of "ToList" operator in LINQ?What is the purpose of "ToArray" operator in LINQ?What is the difference between "ToList" and "ToArray" methods in LINQ?What is the purpose of "ToDictionary" operator in LINQ?What is the purpose of "ToLookup" operator in LINQ?What is the purpose of "Cast" operator in LINQ?What is the purpose of "First" operator in LINQ?What is the purpose of "FirstOrDefault" operator in LINQ?What is the difference between First and FirstOrDefault in LINQ?What is the purpose of "Single" operator in LINQ?What is the purpose of "SingleOrDefault" operator in LINQ?What is the difference between "Single" and "SingleOrDefault" in LINQ?What is the purpose of "Last" operator in LINQ?What is the purpose of "LastOrDefault" operator in LINQ?What is the difference between "Last" and "LastOrDefault" in LINQ?What is the purpose of "Where" operator in LINQ?What is the use of "Select" operator in LINQ?When to use "SelectMany" operator in LINQ?What is the difference between "Select" and "SelectMany" in LINQ?What is the purpose of "OrderBy" clause in LINQ?What is the purpose of "GroupBy" clause in LINQ?What is the usage of "Having" clause in LINQ?What is the purpose of "Distinct" method in LINQ?How do you use the "Distinct" method with a custom equality comparer in LINQ?What is the purpose of "Concat" method in LINQ?What is the purpose of "Skip" method in LINQ?What is the purpose of "Take" method in LINQ?

What is explicit loading?

Explicit loading is a technique used in LINQ to load related entities or data explicitly when needed. It allows you to control the loading behavior and manually fetch specific related entities or collections.

Here's an example that illustrates explicit loading in LINQ:

Consider the same 'Customer' and 'Order' entities as mentioned before:

public class Customer
{
    public int CustomerId { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public ICollection Orders { get; set; }
}

public class Order
{
    public int OrderId { get; set; }
    public DateTime OrderDate { get; set; }
    public decimal TotalAmount { get; set; }
    public int CustomerId { get; set; }
    public Customer Customer { get; set; }
}
To explicitly load the associated orders for a specific customer, you can use the Load method provided by LINQ to SQL:

var customer = dbContext.Customers.FirstOrDefault(c => c.CustomerId == customerId);
dbContext.Entry(customer).Collection(c => c.Orders).Load();

foreach (var order in customer.Orders)
{
    Console.WriteLine($"Order: {order.OrderId}, Date: {order.OrderDate}, Amount: {order.TotalAmount}");
}
In this example, the 'Load' method is used to explicitly load the 'Orders' collection for the 'customer' entity. The 'Entry' method retrieves the 'EntityEntry' object associated with the customer, and the 'Collection' method specifies the navigation property 'c.Orders' that should be loaded.

By using explicit loading, you have control over when and how related entities are loaded. It allows you to fetch related data on-demand and avoid the automatic loading behavior of lazy loading.

Explicit loading is particularly useful when you have scenarios where you want to selectively load related data for specific entities, reducing unnecessary database queries and optimizing performance.

It's important to note that explicit loading requires an active database connection and the availability of related data in the database. You should also be cautious about the potential performance implications, especially if you need to load related data for multiple entities, as it may result in the N+1 problem, where separate queries are executed for each related entity.

Overall, explicit loading in LINQ provides fine-grained control over loading related entities, allowing you to manually fetch specific data as needed. It helps optimize performance and avoid unnecessary data retrieval, particularly in scenarios where lazy loading may not be suitable or efficient.