Is there any way to use a Self-Servicing implementation that works in disconnected mode. We are writing tests and will be using a "mock" provider when the database is not complete or unavailable. But everytime we access a collection on an object to ADD a new instance to the collection, it hits the Db and blows up.

This is not a UI but a backend Business Layer we are building.

Hi, how exactly are you implementing this "mock" provider, please provide more details of your project and if possible a small test solution so we can help you better.

Instead of: myCustomer.Orders.Add(myOrder); which triggers lazy loading you can do: myOrder.Customer = myCustomer;

which doesn't trigger lazy loading but will add myOrder to myCustomer.Orders for you

OK will try this and see what it does for us.

So there is no way to shut off the DB connection and work disconnected?

The Mock reads data from XML files, creates instances of entities and returns populated class instances to the business layer. The Provider layer allows us to switch out the DB with XML files easily for testing specific scenarios without creating bogus data in our test DB.

Either avoid lazy loading, or better use the Adapter model to be sure that nothing connects to the database as long as you are not using a DataAccessAdapter instance.