Excellent update, you have definitely helped me understand the way in which the combos are linked. Thank you for that insight. I'm sorry to disappoint you, it appears that I must have made a mistake at some point and that's why it's not working for me at the end.

Tomorrow I will go through it again very carefully, and hopefully then I'll see the end product work when I load MyPage.jspx in my web browser. Most likely it's a silly mistake on my part.

Thanks for everything Amr, I really appreciate you showing me this stuff :)

Thanks Amr.

Alright, so I installed JDeveloper and the XE Database without any trouble. If anyone else has to install these items, here is what I did on Vista. These packages have everything needed like Amr pointed out. You'll have the web server, the database etc.

1. Downloaded jdevstudio11112install.exe and OracleXEUniv.exe for Windows.
2. Installed JDeveloper, didn't do anything notable configuration wise.
3. Installed the XE Database (had to pick a password, that was it).
4. Logged into the database home page (username:system / password specified during installation).
5. Clicked the Administration icon, then the Database Users icon.
6. Selected the HR user, gave it a password of "hr" and unlocked the account and hit Alter User.
7. Logged out of the database web interface.
8. Launched JDeveloper and started working in the article.

Now on to the article itself.. I was able to follow along and build the web page, but I found the instruction weren't very clear. As I went through the article, I wrote up some recommendations on how you could reword things so that it's clearer and easier to follow. With those confusing parts reworded, the instructions are followable and everything plays out exactly as you described.

The only real disappointment I have is that the article takes us so far, but leaves us with a form that doesn't do anything. It would really be nice if we could actually get the combo boxes to populate and see the dependent combos in action. I know this would require quite a bit more, and I don't know how "do-able" that is. Just a thought.

Another issue I have is that I don't feel you explain the linking of the combo boxes very well. Now, I can envision dependent combo boxes utilizing AJAX in my head, and I get that. What I don't really follow though is exactly what you're doing here and why you're doing it. I guess I just don't see the whole picture very well (I have a headache though, which isn't helping).

Here in a few minutes I'll send you an email with an updated version of your article (the changes I recommend). If you approve of the changes all you'll have to do is copy and paste it into the editor and save it. No need to do anything else, just copy/paste/save.

At any rate, thank you for introducing this topic. I've enjoyed working with JDeveloper, new technologies are always fun to explore. I'd really like to see what others think about the article (especially Java developers, as they'll have the most insight into how helpful this article is). Thanks again Amr, keep it up!!

Oracle requires a *lot* of information to download jdeveloper etc. So, be prepared for that people. It also appears various components are not certified for Vista, so it's a *use at your own risk* deal on that platform. There is also a lot to download and right now I'm finishing up jdeveloper which is around 1GB....

I've never used java *anything*, so this is all new to me. Hopefully it won't take me very long to figure out how to install a working environment to fully test the instructions in this article and the application. As I'm going through this process, I find myself wishing we had a simple "Getting Started with Java *whatever*" guide... Off to google...