An evaluation of Language Integrated Queries (LINQ)

Sammanfattning: Accessing data in databases is an everyday operation that has to function with high performance. The use of Structured Query Language has for a long time been the default way of retrieving and modifying data. Another common approach is through the use of an Object-Relational Mapper. Entity Framework Core is an Object-Relational Mapper that uses Language Integrated Queries (LINQ) to perform operations on databases using programming language syntax. This paper evaluates the performance of LINQ-translated queries in terms of execution time and memory usage, by investigating differences against handwritten SQL queries.The results indicate that LINQ-translated queries performed worse on both execution time and memory usage on 4 out of 7 queries. Additionally, the results show that 2 of these queries had large performance impacts when implemented using LINQ, due to poor support of such operations. In conclusion, the results suggest that LINQ does not perform equal to raw SQL in terms of execution time and memory usage on the queries covered in this study.