I learned that using "empty" does not work here since the List is wrapped in a ListDataModel, and I need to use rowCount on that instead to test for empty. But something weird was still going on. In the debugger window I could see my variable m_availableCars and listed as being an Array - i.e. showing two empty brackets. Changing the name (i.e. removing m_) got my code working. But so, I thought. After restarting JBoss I could not reproduce the problem, and switching back to the "m_" notation worked. So - problem is solved. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4011706#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...