Select List with Redirect clears Foreign Key

Question

I have two pages created by the Form wizard, a report and a form, with a Create button on the report page. When the Create button is pressed it passes a Foreign Key item using f?p syntax - stardard code, so far, so good, the form page works fine.
However, the form contains three Select List items, and the second and third ones need to be restricted by the value of the first one. That is, once they choose an Organization using the first Select List the second Select List should only show Groups that belong to that Organization. To do this, I have chosen the first Select List to be "Select List with Redirect". This does exactly what I want, restricting the values in the second and third items because the LOVs they are based on refer to the value of the first item in their where clauses.
This works fine when I edit an existing record, and also works if I create a new record but don't touch the value of the first Select List. The problem is that when there is no database record and the first Select List is changed, it wipes out the Foreign Key value that was passed - so the record cannot be saved. The url after redirection shows only a value for the item that was changed, and does not include the value of the Foreign Key item as it did when the Create button was pressed.
I cannot find anywhere to specify item/value pairs for the redirection url. So I have created a Computation which sets the value of the Foreign Key item and computes it Before Header, After Header or Before Region, etc. It sets the value, and Session State displays the value. Debug shows it being set, too. But the displayed field is empty in the region, and the record cannot be saved because the item has no value!
Can anyone tell me what I'm missing here? I suspect the processing of the region is overriding the computation. But I can't find a way around this. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Scott,
Sorry, my mistake - it's not a database column, and Alternate Source Used is set to "Only...". The problem is still occurring.
The tables are:
- Person - list of People
- Organization - list of Organizations
- Organization Role - Roles defined for each Organization, has foreign key to Organization
- Person Role - Assignment of a Person to an Organization Role, has foreign key to Organization Role and also to Person
I generated a report on Person with a link to a form on the table. When they press the edit icon, the form for the person comes up fine. Then I enable a series of tabs for that person - to edit addresses, phone numbers, etc. and carry the Person ID forward to each page.
On the Person Roles page, I generated a report that lists the roles that person is assigned to and a form to maintain the assignments. Pressing the edit button goes to the form to maintain the assignment, which works fine.
There is also a Create button to add a new assignment, which goes to the same form and clears the primary key of this table to create a new record. I also pass the Person ID in the url so that the new record can create the foreign key value to Person.
Now here's the problem. On the form to create or edit an assignment, there is a Select List to choose the Organization Role record that they are being assigned to. But this can be a long list, with the same role in several organizations, etc. So I want to allow them to first select the Organization, then select Roles in that Organization.
To do that, I created a new item on the page that is not a database column. It is defined as a Select List on Organization, and they can choose the Organization from the list. Then the select statement for the Organization Role LOV has a where clause that compares Organization ID against the value chosen by the user. To make this work, the page has to be updated when they choose a different Organization, so I made the Organization field a Select List with Redirect.
When I edit existing role assignments this works fine. As soon as I select a new Organization, the Organization Role Select List is updated and I can choose roles defined for that Organization. But when I create a new record (which passes in the Person ID in the url) and then choose an Organization, the Person ID is wiped out - and the record cannot be saved without this foreign key value.
After selecting an organization on a new record, the url shows that the page has been called with only the new value of Organization - so the Person ID is lost, because there is no database record to fetch and it is not passed to the page. And I cannot find a way to set the item/value pairs passed to the url when the redirect is performed.
I am displaying the Person ID for debugging purposes, and see it disappear if I set Display As to "Text", "Display as Text", "Display as Text (based on LOV, does not save state)" or "Display as Text (based on LOV, saves state)". Interestingly, even though the later saves state (I can see it in Session State), it still gets wiped out in the record - presumably because it's a database column and there is no record, and the value is "Always" going to update the session state.
Another interesting behavior: If I set the Person ID to display as a Select List, it remains. I think this is because I do not allow extra values or nulls, so it displays the first value in the list if there is no value. (I have only created one person so far in my testing, so I can't tell yet for sure if it changes. Will try that.)
Is this clear? I'm trying to get this application created in my workspace on htmldb.oracle.com (currently it's on my local database) but having problems creating the tables - unable to create initial extents. Hopefully, I'll have it up there soon and you can examine what I'm doing. I'll let you know when it's available.
Thanks for your help.
Sam