Send a parameter to DataControl Somehow, Please help

Question

Hi All,
This seems like it would be such a simple thing to do but I canno't get it to work, please someone help
Here is my scenario
I have 2 pages
Default.jspx (has a backing bean called backing_Default)
EmployeeSearch.jspx (no backing bean)
I have an The following classes
Employee
EmployeeService (EmployeeService takes 2 parameters, in a method called find employees and returns a List<Employee>)
In JDeveloper I right click on the Employee Service and say create Data Control and like Magic I have a data control
This is where I start having trouble.
Default has two inputText's firstName & lastName and I need to get the value somehow into the datacontrol after the user clicks a button.
I did have this working with a setActionListener that took the value of frirstName and copied it to processScope and then in the Datacontrol I set the firstName parameter NDValue = ${processScope.firstName} and this was working for a while however this seems to be very inconsistent and if the servers are running through a load balancer it deosent work at all
Can anyone please tell me what the best way to do this is? I am a .NET guy by trade and this sort of thing is so easy to do in .NET but I cannot get a consistent result here.
Thanks in Advance
J

Answer 1

From the Data Controls drag and drop your service method in Default.jspx as ADF Parameter Form. You can set this af:panelFormLayout rendered="false".
From the structure window (lower left) highlight af:commandButton, right-click and select "Create Method Binding for Action". This will create a method in the backing bean.
You will need to set the bindings input value and execute the above method on button click.