Help with rich:region vs rich:outputPanel

[indyjones]

Here is my problem....

I have a h:selectOneMenu that is populated by a database query. When the page is rendered it hits the database and retrieves the items.

Within this h:selectOneMenu I have a a4j:support that re-renders a rich:pickList when a value is changed.

This works fine, BUT....

When I first come to the page, according to the logs, the rich:pickList is rendered twice.

Also, when I select something in the h:selectOneMenu, it re-queries for the data that already populates the h:selectOneMenu.

So....

PROBLEM #1
---------------
When the page is first rendered, why does the rich:pickList get rendered twice? How do I set it up so it only renders once.

PROBLEM #2
---------------
What can I add to make sure when a value is selected in the h:selectOneMenu, that it only renders the rich:pickList and doesn't query the database again for values for the h:selectOneMenu?

CODE

<!DOCTYPE composition PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<ui:composition xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
 xmlns:s="http://jboss.com/products/seam/taglib"
 xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets"
 xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core"
 xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html"
 xmlns:rich="http://richfaces.org/rich"
 xmlns:a4j="http://richfaces.org/a4j"
 template="../layout/template.xhtml">

 <ui:define name="body">

 <h:form enctype="multipart/form-data">

 <h:selectOneMenu id="selMenServiceProviders"
 value="#{getserviceproviderfeatures.serviceProvider}" >


 <s:selectItems value="#{getserviceproviders.serviceProviders}"
 var="sp"
 label="#{sp.name}"
 noSelectionLabel="Please select Service Provider...."/>

 <s:convertEntity />

 <a4j:support event="onchange"
 reRender="pklstFeatures" />

 </h:selectOneMenu>

 <rich:pickList id="pklstFeatures"
 value="#{getserviceproviderfeatures.serviceProvider.features}"
 >

 <s:selectItems value="#{getserviceproviderfeatures.serviceProviderFeaturesBW}"
 var="f"
 label="#{f.name}"/>

 <s:convertEntity />

 </rich:pickList>


 </h:form>

 </ui:define>

</ui:composition>

I have tried rich:regions and rich:outputPanels and cant figure it out....

Any help would be really appreciated.....