## Introduction Most EF Core releases are a bag of small quality-of-life fixes. EF Core 10 has a few of those too, but it also lands several changes that remove long-standing workarounds: you no longer hand-write a `GroupJoin` plus `SelectMany` plus `DefaultIfEmpty` to get a left join, you no longer have one all-or-nothing global query filter, and you can now do vector similarity search against SQL Server without a bolt-on. This video runs through the headline features against a small blog/book/author model on .NET 10 and SQL Server. Here is what each one is and when you would reach for it. 🎬 Watch the full video here: ## LeftJoin and RightJoin as real operators Before EF Core 10, a left join in LINQ-to-Entities was the incantation everyone had to look up: `GroupJoin`, then `SelectMany`, then `DefaultIfEmpty`. It worked, it translated fine, and nobody remembered the shape. EF Core 10 adds `LeftJoin` and `RightJoin` as first-class query operators: await context.Authors .LeftJoin(context.Books, author => author.Id, book => book.AuthorId, (author, book) => new { author.Name, book.Title }) .ToListAsync(); Same generated SQL as the old pattern, a fraction of the code, and it reads like the join you meant. This is the change you will use most often. ## Named query filters Global query filters (soft delete, multi-tenancy, "only verified rows") have always had one painful limitation: one filter per entity, and `IgnoreQueryFilters()` turned off _all_ of them. If you had soft-delete and tenant filtering on the same entity, you could not disable one without disabling the other. EF Core 10 lets you **name** filters and toggle them individually: modelBuilder.Entity<Author>() .HasQueryFilter("SoftDeletionFilter", a => !a.IsDeleted) .HasQueryFilter("VerifiedFilter", a => a.IsVerified); // disable just one, keep the rest await context.Authors .IgnoreQueryFilters(["SoftDeletionFilter"]) .ToListAsync(); An admin screen that needs to see soft-deleted rows but must still respect tenant isolation is now a one-liner instead of a manual re-implementation of the other filter. ## Complex types mapped to JSON EF Core 10 lets a complex type be stored as a JSON document in a column: modelBuilder.Entity<Book>() .ComplexProperty(x => x.Attributes, x => x.ToJson()); `BookAttributes` (genre, page count, language, a `string[]` of tags) lives in one `nvarchar` column as JSON, and you can still query into it in LINQ: await context.Books .Where(b => b.Attributes.Pages > 300) .ToListAsync(); EF Core translates the predicate to SQL JSON path access. This is the pragmatic middle ground between a rigid column-per-field schema and an untyped blob - useful for attribute bags that vary and are not worth their own table. ## Vector search for RAG, built in This is the flashiest one. SQL Server 2025 has a native `vector` type, and EF Core 10 can map to it and translate distance functions: [Column(TypeName = "vector(1536)")] public SqlVector<float> Vector { get; set; } await context.BlogPosts .OrderBy(p => EF.Functions.VectorDistance("cosine", p.Vector, queryVector)) .Take(3) .ToListAsync(); Combined with `Microsoft.Extensions.AI` to generate embeddings (the demo uses an Azure OpenAI embedding model), you get the retrieval half of a RAG pipeline - "find the three most semantically similar posts to this text" - as an ordinary EF Core query, with no separate vector database. ## Also worth knowing * `ExecuteUpdateAsync` continues to expand what it can express, including updates driven by other columns, so more bulk updates avoid loading entities. * Various LINQ translation gaps closed, and better SQL for existing queries - the kind of thing you get for free by upgrading. ## Common pitfalls * **Vector search needs the right SQL Server.** The native `vector` type is SQL Server 2025 / recent Azure SQL. Older targets do not have it. * **Named filters are opt-in by name.** If you migrate existing single filters, give them names and update every `IgnoreQueryFilters()` call site, or behavior shifts. * **JSON-mapped complex types query well but index differently.** Filtering `b.Attributes.Pages > 300` works, but performance depends on JSON indexing support in your database - do not assume it is free on a large table. * **`LeftJoin` result selectors can yield nulls.** The right-side entity is null when there is no match; project defensively. ## Key Takeaways * `LeftJoin` / `RightJoin` are now first-class operators - retire the `GroupJoin` + `SelectMany` + `DefaultIfEmpty` pattern. * Query filters can be named and disabled individually with `IgnoreQueryFilters(["Name"])`, fixing the all-or-nothing problem for soft delete plus multi-tenancy. * Complex types can be stored as JSON in a single column and still be queried in LINQ. * SQL Server's native vector type plus `EF.Functions.VectorDistance` gives you similarity search - the retrieval side of RAG - without a dedicated vector store. * Upgrading also brings a batch of translation improvements you do not have to ask for. ## Get the Full Source Code The complete runnable solution - the blog/book/author model, the named query filters, the JSON complex type, and the vector-search endpoints wired to an embedding generator - is available to Patreon supporters. If you want to run the RAG query against real embeddings instead of rebuilding it from the walkthrough above, you can find it on Patreon. ## Resources * What's new in EF Core 10 * Global query filters * Vector search in EF Core * Microsoft.Extensions.AI

EF Core 10 introduces LeftJoin and RightJoin to make outer joins readable and intuitive. This article shows how these methods translate to SQL, how to migrate from GroupJoin and DefaultIfEmpty, and ho...

EF Core 10 finally introduces native LeftJoin and RightJoin LINQ operators, replacing the verbose GroupJoin + DefaultIfEmpty pattern with clean, readable code

.NET 10 finally adds proper LeftJoin and RightJoin methods to LINQ, replacing the complex GroupJoin + DefaultIfEmpty pattern with clean, readable code that does exactly what it says.

- SequenceEqual - Aggregate - GroupJoin - ToLookup - Intersect

We might get the below error while using LINQ to query Dataverse – System.NotSupportedException: ‘The method ‘GroupJoin’ cannot follow the method ‘SelectMany’ or is not supported. Try writing the query […]

Background and motivation Background LINQ has a Join operator, which, like its SQL INNER JOIN counterpart, correlates elements of two sequences based on matching keys; the LINQ join implementation ...

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