Efficient Querying Data With Shared Conditions - sql

Question

I have multiple sets of data which are sourced from an Entity Framework code-first context (SQL CE). There's a GUI which displays the number of records in each query set, and upon changing some set condition (e.g. Date), the sets all need to recalculate their "count" value.
While every set's query is slightly different in some way, most of them share common conditions in some way. A simple example:
RelevantCustomers = People.Where(P=>P.Transactions.Where(T=>T.Date>SelectedDate).Count>0 && P.Type=="Customer")
RelevantSuppliers = People.Where(P=>P.Transactions.Where(T=>T.Date>SelectedDate).Count>0 && P.Type=="Supplier")
So the thing is, there's enough of these demanding queries, that each time the user changes some condition (e.g. SelectedDate), it takes a really long time to recalculate the number of records in each set.
I realise that part of the reason for this is the need to query through, for example, the transactions each time to check what is really the same condition for both RelevantCustomers and RelevantSuppliers.
So my question is that, given these sets share common "base conditions" which depend on the same sets of data, is there some more efficicent way I could be calculating these sets?
I was thinking something with custom generic classes like this:
QueryGroup<People>(P=>P.Transactions.Where(T=>T.Date>SelectedDate).Count>0)
{
new Query<People>("Customers", P=>P.Type=="Customer"),
new Query<People>("Suppliers", P=>P.Type=="Supplier")
}
I can structure this just fine, but what I'm finding is that it makes basically no difference to the efficiency as it still needs to repeat the "shared condition" for each set.
I've also tried pulling the base condition data out as a static "ToList()" first, but this causes issues when running into navigation entities (i.e. People.Addresses don't get loaded).
Is there some method I'm not aware of here in terms of efficiency?
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Give something like this a try: Combine "similar" values into fewer queries, then separate the results afterwards. Also, use Any() rather than Count() for exists check. Your updated attempt goes part-way, but will still result in 2x hits to the database. Also, when querying it helps to ensure that you are querying against indexed fields, and those indexes will be more efficient with numeric IDs rather than strings. (I.e. a TypeID of 1 vs. 2 for "Customer" vs. "Supplier") Normalized values are better for indexing and lead to smaller records, at the cost of extra verbose queries.
var types = new string[] {"Customer", "Supplier"};
var people = People.Where(p => types.Contains(p.Type)
&& p.Transactions.Any(t => t.Date > selectedDate)).ToList();
var relevantCustomers = people.Where(p => p.Type == "Customer").ToList();
var relevantSuppliers = people.Where(p => p.Type == "Supplier").ToList();
This results in just one hit to the database, and the Any should be more perform-ant than fetching an entire count. We split the customers and suppliers after the fact from the in-memory set. The caveat here is that any attempt to access details such as transactions etc. on customers and suppliers would result in lazy-load hits since we didn't eager load them. If you need entire entity graphs then be sure to .Include() relevant details, or be more selective on the data extracted from the first query. I.e. select anonymous types with the applicable details rather than just the entity.