Loading Related Data in EF Core

When building modern applications with Entity Framework Core, fetching related data inefficiently can quickly degrade your application's performance. Understanding how and when to load connected entities is crucial for writing clean, high-performing database queries. This course guides you through the foundational concepts of data relationships and the exact mechanics of retrieving related data. You will transition from basic querying to writing optimized, production-ready data access code. What you'll learn: - Understand the core differences between eager, explicit, and lazy loading strategies - Configure navigation properties and relationship mappings in EF Core - Apply eager loading with Include and ThenInclude to fetch related data in a single query - Execute explicit loading to retrieve related entities on demand using the DbContext API - Implement lazy loading using proxies or lazy-loading parameters while avoiding common performance traps - Analyze generated SQL queries to identify and resolve the N+1 query problem - Practice performance tuning using projection techniques for optimized data transfer This course begins with essential database relationship concepts and EF Core configuration fundamentals before diving into practical loading techniques and performance analysis. It is designed for beginner to intermediate .NET developers who understand basic C# and database concepts but want to master data retrieval. Start reading today to optimize your application's data layer.