Entity Framework: sort linked entities

Question

Given the following entity class, which represents an item in a linked list of items, how can we sort using LINQ these items (in the order defined by NextItemId ) , such that the query is translated to SQL and done on the database side?

public class Item
{
    public virtual int Id { get; set; }
    public virtual string Title { get; set; } 

    public virtual int? NextItemId { get; set; }
    public virtual Item NextItem { get; set; }

}

Answer 1

I don't think it's possible. In my system, where I need to implement somewhat similar feature to this, I use an indexed varchar field to keep the full path of the item like

Id     NextItemId     ItemPath
1      2              /1
2      9              /1/2
9      13             /1/2/9

This way you can query by using where ItemPath.StartsWith() and utilise the index too.