How to COUNT rows within EntityFramework without loading contents?

Question

I\'m trying to determine how to count the matching rows on a table using the EntityFramework.

The problem is that each row might have many

Answer 1

Use the ExecuteStoreQuery method of the entity context. This avoids downloading the entire result set and deserializing into objects to do a simple row count.

   int count;

    using (var db = new MyDatabase()){
      string sql = "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM MyTable where FkId = {0}";

      object[] myParams = {1};
      var cntQuery = db.ExecuteStoreQuery<int>(sql, myParams);

      count = cntQuery.First<int>();
    }