Default value of date picker not showing in sql query

Question

Hi,
I have a tabular form page with a query similar to the following:
select emp_name, salary from emp_table where trunc(hire_date)=trunc(to_date(:P42_START_DATE))
where P42_START_DATE is the name of a date picker item.
I set the source type of the date picker to be "Only when current value in session state is null" and the value to be "select trunc(next_day(sysdate,'MON')-7) from dual;" - basically the monday of the current week. I set the sequence of the date picker to be 5, and the sequence of the region to be 10. Now, when I open this page, no data gets pulled. I checked the page source, and the value of the date picker input is being set to "17-NOV-2008", but it somehow isn't reflected in the sql query.
Data does get retrieved if I manually set the date in the date picker, but I'd like it to default to the monday of the current week. What am I doing wrong?
Thanks

Answer 1

nope, still same problem.
I used javascript alerts to help debug, and here might be some useful information.
The computation to set the value of :P42_START_DATE is set to run "before header", but when I put this following javascript in the header:
<script language="javascript">
var c = $v('P42_START_DATE');
alert(c);
</script>
the alert box is blank (ie :P42_START_DATE is empty). Putting the same exact script in the footer gives 24-Nov-2008 in the alert box. Now, the SQL query is run sometime after the first alert and before the second alert, I believe. Why would the value of :P42_START_DATE not be getting set at the correct time?
P42_START_DATE is a date picker item that belongs to the region SCHEDULE (which is where the sql query is). I set the sequence of the region to 10, and the sequence of the date picker and computation to be 5 and 6. Even so, does this mean that the sql query is executing before the call to the computation, because the region needs to be created before any items can be created that belong to the region?