I’ve noticed some awkward and unnecessary hand-encoding of RdbCommandText in some examples (including MSDN documentation).

I wanted to point out to newcomers to BDC that commands can be wrapped inside a CDATA tag in their "natural" form.  So, this awkward construction:

<Property Name="RdbCommandText" Type="System.String">
  SELECT dbo.MCRS_SETTLEMENT.id, dbo.MCRS_SETTLEMENT.settlement from dbo.MCRS_SETTLEMENT 
    WHERE (id &gt;= @MinId) AND (id &lt;= @MaxId)
</Property>

can be better represented this way:

<Property Name="RdbCommandText" Type="System.String">
  <![CDATA[
    SELECT dbo.MCRS_SETTLEMENT.id, dbo.MCRS_SETTLEMENT.settlement from dbo.MCRS_SETTLEMENT
      WHERE (id >= @MinId) AND (id <= @MaxId)
  ]]>
</Property>

</end>

BDC Primer

Intro to BDC