It generally does that if you tell it to. Meaning, you can't completely ignore the fact that the linq query you are writing will be translated into SQL and the

It generally does that if you tell it to. Meaning, you can't completely ignore the fact that the linq query you are writing will be translated into SQL and the closer your linq query looks to the target SQL you are trying to generate the better EF will do (and it does a great job for a wide range of queries from simple to complex in the systems I have worked on).