Joining on a many to many relationship with LINQ - sql

Question

I have been tasked with converting some old SQL stored procs to LINQ for an EF migration we are doing and Im a little stumped. Given that this is a migration from an existing application the edmx was generated database first. So, I have a SQL statement that I am trying to replicate:
SELECT DISTINCT
d.DeliverySubscriptionId
, d.ContactId
, d.statementMacroId_fk
, m.Name as MacroName
, DeliveryMethod = REPLACE((SELECT DISTINCT
dm2.Name + ',' AS 'data()'
FROM
DeliverySubscription d2
JOIN
StatementMacro m2 on
d2.StatementMacroId_fk = m2.StatementMacroId
JOIN
DeliverySubscription_Method_Rel dmr2 ON
d2.DeliverySubscriptionId = dmr2.DeliverySubscriptionId_Fk
JOIN
dbo.DeliveryMethod dm2 ON
dmr2.DeliveryMethodId_Fk = dm2.DeliveryMethodId
WHERE
d.DeliveryConfigurationId_fk = #configurationId
AND
d.IsActive = 1
AND
D.DeliverySubscriptionId = D2.DeliverySubscriptionId FOR XML PATH('')) + '$', ',$', '')
FROM
DeliverySubscription d
INNER JOIN
StatementMacro m ON
d.StatementMacroId_fk = m.StatementMacroId
JOIN
DeliverySubscription_Method_Rel dmr ON
d.DeliverySubscriptionId = dmr.DeliverySubscriptionId_Fk
JOIN dbo.DeliveryMethod dm ON
dmr.DeliveryMethodId_Fk = dm.DeliveryMethodId
WHERE
d.DeliveryConfigurationId_fk = #configurationId
AND
d.IsActive = 1
In particular the part that I have having an issue with is the JOIN DeliverySubscription_Method_Rel which is a relationship table representing a many to many relationship between DeliverySubscription and DeliveryMethod.
This shows up as:
[DeliverySubscription] * ---- * [Delivery Method]
in the database diagram in the edmx. No DeliverySubscription_Method_Rel entity is created. As you can see in the SQL statement the JOIN is directly on the relationship table, but I cant seem to figure out how to replicate this in LINQ. Please help!
UPDATE:
So looking around the web I found a similar example which suggested doing something like this:
from s in Context.DeliverySubscriptions
from dm in s.DeliveryMethods
join sm in Context.StatementMacroes on s.StatementMacroId_Fk equals sm.StatementMacroId
where s.DeliveryConfigurationId_Fk == configurationId
select new DeliverySubscription_dto
{
DeliverySubscriptionId = s.DeliverySubscriptionId,
QubeContactId = s.QubeContactId,
statementMacroId_fk = s.StatementMacroId_Fk,
MacroName = sm.Name,
DeliveryMethod = dm.Name.Replace("$","").Replace(",$","")
}
...however because I still have a lot of other things to change in the application thus far I am unable to build in order to test this yet so I just wanted to run this buy you all to see if this seems correct.

Answer 1

That query is a beast. If you weren't having any performance problems with it, I would probably just add it to the datamodel and use linq/EF to call it.