Articles from Jinal Desai .

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Difference Between Entity SQL and Transact-SQL
2013-06-04 17:06:02 Jinal Desai

Entity SQL is a SQL-like language that enables you to query conceptual models in the Entity Framework. Conceptual models represent data as entities and relationships, and Entity SQL allows you to query those entities and relationships in a format that is familiar to those who have used SQL. Transact-SQL is extension to SQL created for communicating with SQL Server. All applications that communicate with an instance of SQL Server do so by sending Transact-SQL statements to the server, regardless of the user interface of the application. Both sounds similar but there are many differences between these two. Following table represents those differences.

Entity SQL
Is a language similar to SQL used to work with an Entity Data Model (EDM).

Transact-SQL
Is an ANSI SQL language used for stored procedures and functions.

Is used to work with conceptual entities by Is used to write stored procedures in supporting features like inheritance and relational databases. relationships. Supports collections and considers them as first class entities. Interprets all subqueries to be multiset subqueries, irrespective of the context in which they are used. Allows expressions defined in a from clause to reference earlier expressions defined to the left in the same clause. Does not support collections but does support subqueries and expressions. Interprets subqueries as per the context in which they are used. Does not allow expressions to reference earlier expressions defined in the same scope, such as in a select clause.

Table columns can only be referenced by qualifying them with a table alias, except in Table columns are referenced from clauses where table aliases are directly. optional. Uses the . notation to navigate through the properties of an object. Does not support the * construct. Supports SQL-style aggregates and collection-based aggregates. Allows nested ORDER By expressions anywhere in the queries. Uses the . notation to reference columns. Supports the * construct. Supports only SQL-based aggregates. Allows ORDER By clauses only in the top most SELCT, FROM, and

anywhere in the queries. Identifiers are compared according to the case and accent.

WHERE clauses of the queries. Identifiers are compared according to the current database collation. Supports additional functionalities that are not supported in Entity SQL including:

Supports a subset of Transact-SQLs built Analytic Functions in functions and operators. Builtin Functions, Operators DDL DML -insert, update, delete.