Multiple “order by” in LINQ

Question

I have two tables, movies and categories, and I get an ordered list by categoryID first and then by Name.

Answer 1

use the following line on your DataContext to log the SQL activity on the DataContext to the console - then you can see exactly what your linq statements are requesting from the database:

_db.Log = Console.Out

The following LINQ statements:

var movies = from row in _db.Movies 
             orderby row.CategoryID, row.Name
             select row;

AND

var movies = _db.Movies.OrderBy(m => m.CategoryID).ThenBy(m => m.Name);

produce the following SQL:

SELECT [t0].ID, [t0].[Name], [t0].CategoryID
FROM [dbo].[Movies] as [t0]
ORDER BY [t0].CategoryID, [t0].[Name]

Whereas, repeating an OrderBy in Linq, appears to reverse the resulting SQL output:

var movies = from row in _db.Movies 
             orderby row.CategoryID
             orderby row.Name
             select row;

AND

var movies = _db.Movies.OrderBy(m => m.CategoryID).OrderBy(m => m.Name);

produce the following SQL (Name and CategoryId are switched):

SELECT [t0].ID, [t0].[Name], [t0].CategoryID
FROM [dbo].[Movies] as [t0]
ORDER BY [t0].[Name], [t0].CategoryID