HowTo: LINQ to SQL debugging

10 Apr, 2008 by Robert Muehsig HowTo

I`m working on a project where I use LINQ to SQL. It´s very cool (and sometimes tricky ), but what if I need deeper information about the "LINQ to SQL magic" – how can I debug the LINQ to SQL stuff?

1. Option: Visual Studio

The simplest option is of course Visual Studio itself. Just checking the objects – very easy.

If you want to know which SQL statement is send to the SQL Server you need another tool:

2. Option: LINQ to SQL Debug Visualizer

A powerful tool: LINQ to SQL Debug Visualizer. I can´t understand why Microsoft hide this handy tool.

3. Option: DataContext.Log

A build-in option for logging is the DataContext.Log property. It is very useful in a consol application – but not in a class library. I found a very smart "Output Logger" class on this blog: Sending the LINQ To SQL log to the debugger output window. Each generated sql statement will be send to the output window.

This are my "debugging" tools – maybe could "LinqPad" another nice tool.

Any other suggestion? Feel free to comment (you can even comment my english ).

1 Comment so far »

Polaris said

am November 3 2008 @ 6:42 pm

DataClasses1DataContext db = new DataClasses1DataContext();

var organizations = from org in db.Organizations
where org.Divisions.Count > 0
select org;

Debug.WriteLine(organizations);

will output:

SELECT [t0].[OrganizationID], [t0].[Name]
FROM [dbo].[Organizations] AS [t0]
WHERE ((
SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM [dbo].[Divisions] AS [t1]
WHERE [t1].[OrganizationID] = [t0].[OrganizationID]
)) > @p0