Thanks for the responses. Unfortunately, putting the DataModel into PAGE scope doesn't change anything- selectedOrganization is still NULL in selectOrganization(). I'm stuck in phase two (disillusion) of Gavin's "http://blog.hibernate.org/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi/Gavin%20King/stages-of-adoption.html", and seeking insight. I don't see why this finder bean itself should require any state. Am I wrong? It certainly shouldn't have to around in SESSION scope. I should have mentioned before, I'm using Seam 1.1.1GA and JBoss 4.0.5 Side Note: Don't ever set var="org" in a dataTable. Doing so causes Seam to go nuts searching contexts and it eventually throws an exception because can't find a property called 'jboss' in the entity bean. Should I report this as a bug? I'd be happy to provide a test case. Using var="o" changes the behavior completely.[/url] View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4008885#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...