Is it possible to get an entitycollection (self servicing) to get only pre-selected columns from the table? Maybe in a manner that the omitted columns are left null in the entities.
I know it's possible with a typed list, but I need it to be read/writeable.
with 2.0 you need to use projection to fill a collection with a subset of fields. see the documentation for more information.
in 2.5 (beta) there is an exclude feature which allows you to fill a collection with a subset of fields. I just read another post by Otis which sounds like there will be modifications to this feature before final release.