I was a bit confused about this as well. The DB builds a query plan from the SQL. Linq builds an SQL query, so they're two parts in a chain, not interchangeab

I was a bit confused about this as well. The DB builds a query plan from the SQL. Linq builds an SQL query, so they're two parts in a chain, not interchangeable. The confusion seems to come from "preprocessing" the query twice. LINQ adds another layer of preprocessing.