What's the Linq to SQL equivalent to TOP or LIMIT/OFFSET?

Question

How do I do this

Select top 10 Foo from MyTable

in Linq to SQL?

Answer 1

Whether the take happens on the client or in the db depends on where you apply the take operator. If you apply it before you enumerate the query (i.e. before you use it in a foreach or convert it to a collection) the take will result in the "top n" SQL operator being sent to the db. You can see this if you run SQL profiler. If you apply the take after enumerating the query it will happen on the client, as LINQ will have had to retrieve the data from the database for you to enumerate through it