Question

I have a classical many to many scenario with three tables (students, courses, and third StudentsCourses assignment table).

I’m using EF in my new project and EF designer doesn’t create third table. I need to select all cources along with number of students assigned to it. Using plain SQL is very straightforward:

select c.Id, c.Name, Count(sc.*) as StudentCount  from Courses c left join StudentCourses sc on(c.Id=sc.CourseId) group by c.Id, c.Name 

But I can’t figure out how to translate this query to Linq to SQL. Please advice.

Thank you.

Answer 1

The EF designer hides the table. It’s still there, but it just creates the assocation for you, so you can just reference students from courses or vice versa.