Unable to edit ReadItem and ReadList operations on one specific external content type

Question

I'm experiencing a strange behavior.  Here is the scenario:
- In Sharepoint Designer I create external content type A that uses external system X
- I define ReadItem and ReadList operations for this external content type
- I then create external content B that uses the exact same external system X and define ReadItem and ReadList operations for this external content type
- I then go back to external content type A, select ReadList and click Edit This Operation
- I get a message : "This operation cannot be matched with any objects in your data source.  There may be an error in the operation definition in Business Data Connectivity Metadata Store or the data source schema has changed since the operation
was created"
- I tried to edit ReadList operation of external content type B and it works with no problems.
- so I delete the ReadItem and ReadList operations for external content type A, refresh external system X, and then recreate the ReadItem and ReadList operations for external content type A. 
- When I try to edit the ReadList (or ReadItem) operation I get the same error message and I'm not able to edit this operation.
This used to work a week or so ago, meaning that I was able to edit the ReadItem and ReadList operations for both external content types.  Now, the operations cannot be edited anymore for external content type A but can be edited with no problems for
external content type B.  For content type A, if I want to make any changes I have to delete the ReadItem and ReadList operations and recreate them.  Does anybody have any idea as to what the problem might be?  These two external content types
use the same external system which is a table of employees and project they worked on.  The only difference is that external content type A has a filter by employee ID defined and external content type B has a filter by project ID defined.
thanks,

Answer 1

Hi bbatl,
I did a test as the followigs:
Open SQL Management Studio, create a table containing a filed called “employee ID” and a filed called “project ID”.
Add some data into the table.
Open my site with SharePoint Designer 2010, create a new external content type called TestA.
Connect the external content type TestA to the table that I created in step 1.
Create Read Item and Read List operations in the content type. When creating Read List operation, add a filter based on “employee ID”.
Click Save.
Create another external content type called TestB
Connect the external content type TestB to the table which was created in step 1.
Create Read Item and Read List operations in the content type. When creating Read List operation, add a filter based on “project ID”.
Click Save.
Then I went back to edit the Read List operation of external content type TestA via clicking Read List operation under External Content Type operations->Edit Operation.
No error displayed.
So, I could not reproduce this issue.
Whether you got the error when you clicked “Edit Operation” in SharePoint Designer. Please provide a screenshot about this issue.
Please check whether someone has changed the table special for the column “employee ID”.
And whether you have created an external list using the problematic external content type. If yes, please check whether it could work well.
Best Regards,
Wendy
Forum Support
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Wendy Li
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