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Group Join Clause (Visual Basic)

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Combines two collections into a single hierarchical collection. The join operation is based on matching keys.

Syntax

Group Join element [As type] In collection _  
  On key1 Equals key2 [ And key3 Equals key4 [... ] ] _  
  Into expressionList

Parts

Term Definition
element Required. The control variable for the collection being joined.
type Optional. The type of element. If no type is specified, the type of element is inferred from collection.
collection Required. The collection to combine with the collection that is on the left side of the Group Join operator. A Group Join clause can be nested in a Join clause or in another Group Join clause.
key1 Equals key2 Required. Identifies keys for the collections being joined. You must use the Equals operator to compare keys from the collections being joined. You can combine join conditions by using the And operator to identify multiple keys. The key1 parameter must be from the collection on the left side of the Join operator. The key2 parameter must be from the collection on the right side of the Join operator.

The keys used in the join condition can be expressions that include more than one item from the collection. However, each key expression can contain only items from its respective collection.
expressionList Required. One or more expressions that identify how the groups of elements from the collection are aggregated. To identify a member name for the grouped results, use the Group keyword (<alias> = Group). You can also include aggregate functions to apply to the group.

Remarks

The Group Join clause combines two collections based on matching key values from the collections being joined. The resulting collection can contain a member that references a collection of elements from the second collection that match the key value from the first collection. You can also specify aggregate functions to apply to the grouped elements from the second collection. For information about aggregate functions, see Aggregate Clause.

Consider, for example, a collection of managers and a collection of employees. Elements from both collections have a ManagerID property that identifies the employees that report to a particular manager. The results from a join operation would contain a result for each manager and employee with a matching ManagerID value. The results from a Group Join operation would contain the complete list of managers. Each manager result would have a member that referenced the list of employees that were a match for the specific manager.

The collection resulting from a Group Join operation can contain any combination of values from the collection identified in the From clause and the expressions identified in the Into clause of the Group Join clause. For more information about valid expressions for the Into clause, see Aggregate Clause.

A Group Join operation will return all results from the collection identified on the left side of the Group Join operator. This is true even if there are no matches in the collection being joined. This is like a LEFT OUTER JOIN in SQL.

You can use the Join clause to combine collections into a single collection. This is equivalent to an INNER JOIN in SQL.

Example

The following code example joins two collections by using the Group Join clause.

Dim customerList = From cust In customers
                   Group Join ord In orders On
                   cust.CustomerID Equals ord.CustomerID
                   Into CustomerOrders = Group,
                        OrderTotal = Sum(ord.Total)
                   Select cust.CompanyName, cust.CustomerID,
                          CustomerOrders, OrderTotal

For Each customer In customerList
    Console.WriteLine(customer.CompanyName &
                      " (" & customer.OrderTotal & ")")

    For Each order In customer.CustomerOrders
        Console.WriteLine(vbTab & order.OrderID & ": " & order.Total)
    Next
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See also