The N+1 Select problem

The N + 1 Select problem arises due to an internal data store call made by any ORM framework to perform a single operation. The problem could be outlined as follows:

1. A list of entities was returned that will be further iterated to perform some additional operation.
2. Assuming a navigational property is accessed inside the iteration:
   • Each time an iteration tries to access the navigational property, a database hit occurs
   • The hits will happen N times for N number of items returned in the first step
3. This makes the application perform N+1 Select (N for the iterations and 1 for the first call that retrieves the list), which should have been performed in a single database call.

This behavior is often termed as lazy loading in any ORM frameworks, which loads the subsequent/dependent data only when required. The lazy loading is yet to be supported by EF Core....