entity object cannot be referenced by multiple instances of IEntityChangeTracker. while adding related objects to entity in Entity Framework 4.1

Because these two lines …

EmployeeService es = new EmployeeService();
CityService cs = new CityService();

… don’t take a parameter in the constructor, I guess that you create a context within the classes. When you load the city1…

Payroll.Entities.City city1 = cs.SelectCity(...);

…you attach the city1 to the context in CityService. Later you add a city1 as a reference to the new Employee e1 and add e1 including this reference to city1 to the context in EmployeeService. As a result you have city1 attached to two different context which is what the exception complains about.

You can fix this by creating a context outside of the service classes and injecting and using it in both services:

EmployeeService es = new EmployeeService(context);
CityService cs = new CityService(context); // same context instance

Your service classes look a bit like repositories which are responsible for only a single entity type. In such a case you will always have trouble as soon as relationships between entities are involved when you use separate contexts for the services.

You can also create a single service which is responsible for a set of closely related entities, like an EmployeeCityService (which has a single context) and delegate the whole operation in your Button1_Click method to a method of this service.ShareFollow