As far as I know, the equals sign should give you an exact match in both VB and Sql Server. Exactly how it handles the equals sign in your where is going to depend on if oClient.ClientService.Clients() is IQueryable or IEnumerable. If its IQueryable, then the where clause should get translated into the Sql Server query equivalent and executed on the server. If its IEnumerable, then the list has already been retrieved and the filtering is done in memory using VB. The article at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/ff963710.aspx has a more in-depth look at the differences between the two.