Why use .AsEnumerable() rather than casting to IEnumerable?

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Readability is the main issue here. Consider that

Table.AsEnumerable().Where(somePredicate)

is far more readable than

((IEnumerable<TableObject>)Table).Where(somePredicate).

Or imagine wanting to execute part of the query on the SQL Server and the rest in memory:

Table.Where(somePredicate)
     .Select(someProjection)
     .AsEnumerable()
     .SomethingElse()

versus

((IEnumerable<SomeProjectionType>)Table.Where(somePredicate)
                                       .Select(someProjection))
                                       .SomethingElse()

Now, as for why such a method is useful at all think of the example of a Table in a LINQ to SQL DataContext. As Table is an IQueryable it implements IEnumerable. When you invoke a Where method on such a Table and enumerate through the results, code is executed that eventually causes a SQL statement to be executed on a SQL Server. What AsEnumerable does is says, no, I don’t want to use the LINQ to SQL provider to execute the Where, I want to use the LINQ to Objects implementation of Where.

Thus enumerating over

Table.Where(somePredicate)

causes a query to be executed on a SQL Server whereas enumerating over

Table.AsEnumerable().Where(somePredicate)

brings the table represented by Table into memory and executes the Where functionality in memory (and not on the SQL Server!)

This is the point of AsEnumerable: to allow you to hide a specific implementation of IEnumerable methods and instead use the standard implementation.

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