What is the big deal with IQueryable?

I've seen a lot of people talking about IQueryable and I haven't quite picked up on what all the buzz is about. I always work with generic List's and find they are very rich in the way you can "query" them and work with them, even run LINQ queries against them.

I'm wondering if there is a good reason to start considering a different default collec开发者_如何学运维tion in my projects.

The IQueryable interface allows you to define parts of a query against a remote LINQ provider (typically against a database, but doesn't have to be) in multiple steps, and with deferred execution.

E.g. your database layer could define some restriction (e.g. based on permissions, security - whatever) by adding a .Where(x => x.......) clause to your query. But this doesn't get executed just yet - e.g. you're not retrieving 150'000 rows that match that criteria.

Instead, you pass up the IQueryable interface to the next level, the business layer, where you might be adding additional requirements and where clauses to your query - again, nothing gets executed just yet, you're also not tossing out 80'000 of your 150'000 rows you retrieved - you're just defining additional query criteria.

And the UI layer might do the same thing, e.g. based on user input in a form or something.

The magic is that you're passing the IQueryable interface through all the layers, adding additional critieria to it - but it doesn't get executed / evaluated until you actually force it. This also means you're not needlessly selecting and retrieving tons of data which you end up discarding afterwards.

You can't really do that with a classic static list - you have to pick the data, possibly discarding a lot of it again later on in the process - you have a static list, after all.

IQueryable allows you to make queries using LINQ, just like the LINQ to Object queries, where the queries are actually "compiled" and run elsewhere.

The most common implementations work against databases. If you use List<T> and LINQ to Objects, you load the entire "table" of data into memory, then run your query against it.

By using IQueryable<T>, the LINQ provide can "translate" your LINQ statement into actual SQL code, and run it on the database. The results can be returned to you and enumerated.

This is much, much more efficient, especially if you're working in N-Tiered systems.

LINQ queries against IEnumerable<T> produce delegates (methods) which, when invoked, perform the described query.

LINQ queries against IQueryable<T> produce expression trees, a data structure which represents the code that produced the query. LINQ providers such as LINQ to SQL interpret these data structures, generating the same query on the target platform (T-SQL in this case).

For an example of how the compiler interprets the query syntax against IQueryable<T>, see my answer to this question:

Building Dynamic LINQ Queries based on Combobox Value