Can we control LINQ expression order with Skip(), Take() and OrderBy()

Question

I\'m using LINQ to Entities to display paged results. But I\'m having issues with the combination of Skip(), Take() and OrderBy() calls.

Answer 1

Assuming from you comment the persisting the values in a List is not acceptable:

There's no way to completely minimize the iterations, as you intended (and as I would have tried too, living in hope). Cutting the iterations down by one would be nice. Is it possible to just get the Count once and cache/session it? Then you could:

int total = ctx.EntitySet.Count;  // Hopefully you can not repeat doing this.
var result = ctx.EntitySet.Where(/* filter */).OrderBy(/* expression */).Skip(n).Take(x).ToList();

Hopefully you can cache the Count somehow, or avoid needing it every time. Even if you can't, this is the best you can do.