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Use a NaturalSortComparer in a LINQ Where Clause

Say I have a table Table1 with a string field [ProductString] with values:
Alpha, alphanumeric or numeric: eg ABC, B4, U2, C 5, 100, U1, U5, U6, U11
I want to be able to take a where clause like "ProductString >= U5", and pass this to a LINQ statement as a string so it evaluates
Table1.Where(t=> t.ProductString >= 'U5');
Normally this would return results U5 and U6.
However, this I want to be able to use a NaturalSortComparer somehow so that the results returned are U5, U6 and U11.
I know how to use the comparer in an OrderBy, by I wanted to be able to use it at the Where stage.

Using natural sort comparer:
var comparer = new NaturalComparer();
Table1.Where(t=>
comparer.Compare(t.ProductString, "U5") >= 0);
Presuming all your product strings is on the format U%number% then why not abuse that fact?
Table1.Where(t=> int.Parse(t.ProductString.Replace("U","")) >= 5);
If you're using LINQ to Entities I'm not certain this will compile to a store expression (i.e that SQL knows what to do with this - I guess it should).

I'm a little confused, given the accepted answer, about whether this question relates to LINQ to Entities or not. The accepted answer doesn't appear to be a solution that would work in the LINQ to Entities context, but the comments on the question by the OP seem to confirm that this is being executed in the database context. Anyway, this answer is specifically targeted toward LINQ to Entities.
I think doing this in SQL Server would be hard, but not impossible. The problem is that .NET knows what NaturalSortComparer is, but SQL Server (where you want the query to ultimately take place) has no such concept. The best idea I can think of would consist of 2 parts:
Create a UDF (User Defined Function) in SQL server that will give a product that is orderable via natural sort: CREATE FUNCTION Naturalize(#val as nvarchar(max)) RETURNS nvarchar(1000). There's a pretty cool answer here that creates a UDF wrapper around a CLR function to accomplish just that.
Next create a function mapping for your DbContext that maps the UDF above to a function that can be called inside an EF query against the DbContext. Something like this:
[DbFunction("MyContext", "Naturalize")]
public static string Naturalize(this string value)
{
throw new NotSupportedException("This function can only be invoked from LINQ to Entities.");
}
Once you've got these two pieces in place, you can readily use this new function inside an entity query to compare strings using the Naturalized value in the comparison:
Table1.Where(t=> t.ProductString.Naturalize() >= "U5".Naturalize());
Bear in mind that the UDF will be executed against every row contained in the query, which is the whole table in the above example. You'll want to make sure to pare down your query to something manageable before applying the function as a sub-query. Or you may want to try applying some type of UDF-based index on the table in question.

If you are going to be doing searches like this a lot, then what will be the best thing to do is add two new fields to your table, [ProductCode] & [ProductNumber] which separate the two parts of the [ProductString].
Then you comparison becomes:
Table1.Where(t=> t.ProductCode == "U" && t.ProductNumer > 5);

Concatenating three lists into one with LINQ throws an exception

Ok, I must be doing something dumb, but shouldn't this work? I have following three lists:
var commonViews = (from v in context.TPM_VIEWS where v.VIEWID < 0 select v); // IQueryable<TPM_VIEWS>
var ownedViews = (from v in context.TPM_VIEWS where v.OWNERID == userId && v.VIEWID > 0 select v); // IQueryable<TPM_VIEWS>
var sharedViews = (from v in context.TPM_USER.Include("TPM_VIEWS2") where v.USERID == userId select v).First().TPM_VIEWS2; // EntityCollection<TPM_VIEWS>
Each list has the proper values and count. I can return any one of these lists:
return commonViews.ToList();
And I can return a any two of these lists:
return commonViews.Concat(ownedViews).ToList();
However, when I try to return all three:
return commonViews.Concat(ownedViews).Concat(sharedViews).ToList();
I get the exception:
Unable to create a constant value of type 'Entity.TPM_VIEWS'. Only
primitive types or enumeration types are supported in this context.
What am I doing wrong? All three values are indeed enumerable. Mostly, I'm asking this question because it's the best possible way to guarantee I'll notice the problem 30 seconds after posting.
UPDATE:
I'm 93% sure the problem is here:
var sharedViews = (from v in context.TPM_USER.Include("TPM_VIEWS2") where v.USERID == userId select v).First().TPM_VIEWS2;
This looks like an enumerable list of TPM_VIEWS object, and I can call ToList() on it and get the correct data, but it doesn't play well with the other lists.
UPDATE 2:
This actually works. Points to the person who can tell me why!
commonViews.ToList().Concat(ownedViews.ToList()).Concat(sharedViews.ToList()).ToList();

The problem is that Concat() on an EF IQueryable<T> will turn the entire concatenation into a single query.
When you call .Concat(sharedViews), you're passing a scalar (pre-loaded) collection of your nested entity class.
EF doesn't know how to convert that into a query, so it complains.
You can make it faster by calling AsEnumerable() instead of ToList().

This actually works. Points to the person who can tell me why!
commonViews.ToList().Concat(ownedViews.ToList()).Concat(sharedViews.ToList()).ToList();
That's because each of the original queries is executed separately; you're only concatenating the results in memory. There seems to be a bug in the Entity Framework query translator when you combine the 3 queries, but when you call ToList on each of them, they're no longer EF queries, they're just lists, so they're concatenated using Linq to Objects.

Which LINQ expression do I need for this, without looping?

I have an MSSQL database with LINQ to SQL.
I have three tables.
Requests -> id, string name
Results -> id, requestID, int jumps
Places -> id, resultID, int location
Then, using an input string, I need to get an ICollectable or array or something of Place which meets the following:
Each Request that has name=input, take its ID.[you can assume only one has]
Each Result that has requestID=ID[from above] - take its id.
Each Place that has resultID='id[from above]' - append to array for further processing.
I made it by looping on all Results and then executing another LINQ statement, but its extremely slow [about 500ms for a single request!]. Can I make it any faster?
Thank you!
Edit: Whoops, I also need it grouped by result. aka a List of List of Places, while each inner list contains one column from Result.

You can perform table joins in Linq2Sql using the join keyword:
var places = from request in Requests
join result in Results on request.Id equals result.requestID
join place in Places on result.Id equals place.ResultId
where request.name = input
select place;

Somthing like
Requests.Where(r => r.name == input).Results.Places.Select();
If this is too slow then I expect you need some indexes on your database.
If you don't have the relationships in your model then you need to establish some foreign key constraints on your tables an rebuild your model.

EF Code First: How to search over multiple tables / entities?

I've got 4 unrelated entities and I would like to query them for a certain keyword. Each entity had a LastModified field and I would like to return the top 50 result of the search over the 4 tables order by the LastModified field. Is this even possible?
In the past I've used a view to do this kind of stuff... but I don't understand how to achieve it with EF Code First.

You will need to:
Search each table
Transform the results into a common type
Merge the results
Sort/select from this merged list
Take the first 50 results.
The first two can be done with LINQ to Entities, the latter three with LINQ to Objects.
EDIT This approach would look something like:
var resA = from a in db.A
where ConditionA(a)
select MakeSharedFromA(a);
var resB = from b in db.B
where ConditionB(b)
select MakeSharedFromB(b);
var resC = from c in db.C
where ConditionC(c)
select MakeSharedFromC(c);
var resD = from d in db.D
where ConditionD(d)
select MakeSharedFromD(d);
var merged = resA.AsEnumerable().Take(50)
.Concat(resB.AsEnumerable().Take(50))
.Concat(resC.AsEnumerable().Take(50))
.Concat(resD.AsEnumerable().Take(50));
var res = merged.Sort(x => x.SortField).Take(50);
If each of the MakeSharedFromX methods can be replaced by a lambda (to give an expression tree) which is limited to operators and functions that LINQ to Entities supports, then drop the AsEnumerable and Take calls from the concatenation step and all can be carried out server side.

Advanced Linq sorting C#

I have an IQueryable that has a list of pages.
I want to do: Pages.OrderByDescending(o => CalculateSort(o.page));
the method calculate sort is similar to that here is a plain english version:
public int calculatesort(page p)
{
int rating = (from r in db.rating select r). sum();
int comments = //query database for comments;
float timedecayfactor = math.exp(-page.totalhoursago);
return sortscore = (rating +comments)* timedecayfactor;
}
when I run a code similar to the one above an error is thrown that the mothode calculatesort cannot be converted to sql.
How can I do a conver the function above to be understood by sql so that I can use it to sort the pages?
Is this not a good approach for large data? Is there another method used to sort sets of results other than dynamically at the database?
I havent slept for days trying to fix this one :(

your code is nowhere near compiling so I'm guessing a lot here but I hope this gives an idea none the less.
As several have posted you need to give Linq-2-Sql an expression tree. Using query syntax that's what happens (by compiler magic)
from p in pages
let rating = (from r in db.rating
where r.PageId == p.PageId
select r.Value).Sum()
let comments = (from c in db.Comments
where c.PageId == p.PageId
select 1).Count()
let timedecayfactor = Math.Exp(-(p.totalhoursago))
orderby (rating + comments)*timedecayfactor descending
select p;
I haven't actually tried this against a database, there's simply too many unknown based on your code, so there might still be stuff that can't be translated.

The error occurs because LINQ cannot convert custom code/methods into SQL. It can convert only Expression<Func<>> objects into SQL.
In your case, you have a complex logic to do while sorting, so it might make sense to do it using a Stored Procedure, if you want to do it in the DB Layer.
Or load all the objects into main memory, and run the calculate sort method on the objects in memory
EDIT :
I don't have the code, so Describing in english is the best I can do :
Have table with structure capable of temporarily storing all the current users data.
Have a calculated field in the Pages table that holds the value calculated from all the non-user specific fields
Write a stored procedure that uses values from these two sources (temp table and calc field) to actually do the sort.
Delete the temp table as the last part in the stored proc
You can read about stored procs here and here

var comments = db.comments.Where(...);
Pages.OrderByDescending(p=>(db.rating.Sum(r=>r.rate) + comments.Count()) * Math.Exp(-p.totalhoursago))

Linq is expecting Calculatesort to return a "queryable" expression in order to generate its own SQL.
In can embed your 'calculatesort' method in this lambda expression. (I replaced your variables with constants in order to compile in my environment)
public static void ComplexSort(IQueryable<string> Pages)
{
Pages.OrderByDescending(p =>
{
int rating = 99;//(from r in db.rating select r). sum();
int comments = 33;//query database for comments;
double timedecayfactor = Math.Exp(88);
return (rating + comments) * timedecayfactor;
});
}
Also, you can even try to run that in parallel (since .net 4.0) replacing the first line with
Pages.AsParallel().OrderByDescending(p =>

Yes, counting previous answers: the LINQ to SQL doesn't know how to translate CalculateSort method. You should convert LINQ to SQL to ordinary LINQ to Object before using custom method.
Try to use this in the way you call the CalculateSort by adding AsEnumerable:
Pages.AsEnumerable().OrderByDescending(o => CalculateSort(o.page));
Then you're fine to use the OrderByDescending extension method.
UPDATE:
LINQ to SQL will always translate the query in the code into Expression tree. It's quite almost the same concept as AST of any programming language. These expression trees are further translated into SQL expression specific to SQL Server's SQL, because currently LINQ to SQL only supports SQL Server 2005 and 2008.