In Listing 13-4, the author provides the following logic for obtaining the most prolific author (i.e. the author with the greatest number of books) in the example given:
Code:
var prolificAuthor = (
from author in authors
orderby author.Books.Count() descending
select author
).First();
While this works, it is not as efficient as it could be, in that it relies on ordering the query, which is a very expensive operation.
An alternative way of doing this would be as follows:
Code:
var prolificAuthor =
(from author in authors
where author.Books.Count() == authors.Max(auth => auth.Books.Count())
select author).First();
This code selects the first author from a list of authors in which their book count equals the maximum book count. It accomplishes the same thing, but is much quicker, as it does not involve any ordering.
Chapter 13 : Querying Objects
