I have a table with a ModifiedUserID field that is a foreign key to a User table. In entity framework, I'm loading the first table, but not the users table. I have the user ID of the current user, and would like to set the ModifiedUserID to that value for all entities that have been modified prior to saving.

Before calling SaveChanges(), I use the ObjectStateManager to get all modified entities. Since I do not have the user object, but I do have the user ID, I set the EntityReference.EntityKey property as follows:

entity.UserReference.EntityKey = New EntityKey("MyContainer.User", "UserID", DatabaseUserID)

This works fine, but when I execute SaveChanges(), I receive the following error:

A relationship is being added or deleted from an AssociationSet 'FK_Table1_User'. With cardinality constraints, a corresponding 'Table1' must also be added or deleted.

Now, I see that setting the EntityReference.EntityKey creates a new AssociationSet entry, but how to I prevent this error?