Links for navigation tree not rendering as expected

Question

I have a tree menu that links to various applications. It provides single sign-on to different applications for intranet users, passing encrypted authentication details between apps. The tree table is defined as:
APPLICATION_ID NUMBER(10),
APPLICATION_NAME VARCHAR2(50),
LOCATION VARCHAR2(500),
PARENT_APPLICATION_ID NUMBER(10),
SHOW VARCHAR2(1)
The location column provides the link for the tree. Here is an example of one record:
set escape ~
insert into application_menu_tree
values (2, 'Application Name',
'f?p=100:102:::NO::P101_USERNAME,P101_PASSWORD,MENU_SESSION:~&MENU_USERNAME.,~&MENU_PASSWORD.,~&APP_SESSION.',
1,
NULL);
This works without a problem in the full version of APEX/10gR2/Oracle App Server. Mouse over a link and you see the &APP_USERRNAME. replaced with the encrypted version of the username. Same with the rest.
Export/import into XE though and the link doesn't pick up the &MENU_USERNAME., &MENU_PASSWORD., or &APP_SESSION. when rendering the menu. A mouse-over of the link shows those values are not being replaced in the string, but if I pull the session values using the Edit links, all are populated just fine.
If I copy that same string (the one that is used for the link in the tree), and paste it directly to an html region as an href, the variables are replaced as expected and the link works just fine.
So, a link pulled from the table doesn't have those values replaced, where the same string in an html region as an href does just fine. The table method does work in the full version, but doesn't in two installs of XE (same page definition - export/import).
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Ron

Answer 1

Did you change anything when moving the application to XE, or did you just a plain export/import? Plain export/import except the choice of theme- was using 16 in 2.2 and changed to an XE supplied theme.
You exported the application using UTF8 and imported it using UTF8 as well, right? Yep
Which version of XE are you using, the Western European Edition or the Universal one?Universal
What was the exact select statement and what type of region did you use? The tree query is about as straight forward as can be:
select "APPLICATION_ID" id,
"PARENT_APPLICATION_ID" pid,
"APPLICATION_NAME" name,
location link,
null a1,
null a2
from "#OWNER#"."APPLICATION_MENU_TREE"
Was it the same in XE and Apex 2.2.1?Yep - no difference in data or query, and the page is exactly the same except for the application theme.
I just modified the query to do the replacement instead and that's working just fine in XE. New query:
select "APPLICATION_ID" id,
"PARENT_APPLICATION_ID" pid,
"APPLICATION_NAME" name,
REPLACE(
REPLACE(
REPLACE(location, '#APP_SESSION#', :app_session),
'#MENU_USERNAME#', :menu_username),
'#MENU_PASSWORD#', :menu_password) link,
null a1,
null a2
from "#OWNER#"."APPLICATION_MENU_TREE"
I'll post an example of what I'd set up before to the Oracle hosted APEX when I get a chance and toss the link here. Being 2.2.1 it should work there as well.
Thanks again for the suggested change!
Ron