sorry about the crappy layout of the post above.

I've recreated this with a simple example using Seam Gen. If you have a PERSON entity and a CITY entity. Then you wish to show a list of CITYs with a column holding a ui:repeat (or similar) displaying all associated PERSONs. The cause of the problem is that this is an "all-in-one" type page where the form to add the record is on the same page as the table to display. I suspect that something is needed to force the refresh.

The page:

<!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:a="https://ajax4jsf.dev.java.net/ajax"
 xmlns:rich="http://richfaces.ajax4jsf.org/rich"
 template="layout/template.xhtml">
<ui:define name="body">
 <h:messages globalOnly="true" styleClass="message" id="globalMessages"/>
 <h:form id="person" styleClass="edit">
 <rich:panel>
 <f:facet name="header">Create Person</f:facet>
 <s:decorate id="firstnameDecoration" template="layout/edit.xhtml">
 <ui:define name="label">Firstname</ui:define>
 <h:inputText id="firstname" value="#{personHome.instance.firstname}"/>
 </s:decorate>
 <s:decorate id="surnameDecoration" template="layout/edit.xhtml">
 <ui:define name="label">Surname</ui:define>
 <h:inputText id="surname" value="#{personHome.instance.surname}"/>
 </s:decorate>
 <s:decorate id="cityDecoration" template="layout/edit.xhtml">
 <ui:define name="label">City</ui:define>
 <h:selectOneMenu id="city" value="#{personHome.instance.city}" style="width:250px;">
 <s:selectItems value="#{cityList.resultList}" var="city"
 noSelectionLabel="Please Select..." label="#{city.cityname}"/>
 <s:convertEntity />
 </h:selectOneMenu>
 </s:decorate>
 <div style="clear:both">
 <span class="required">*</span>
 required fields
 </div>
 </rich:panel>
 <div class="actionButtons">
 <h:commandButton id="save" value="Save"
 action="#{personHome.persist}" rendered="#{!personHome.managed}"/>
 </div>
 </h:form>
 <rich:dataTable var="city" value="#{cityList.resultList}"
 rowClasses="rvgRowOne,rvgRowTwo" id="cityTable">
 <h:column>
 <f:facet name="header">City</f:facet>
 #{city.cityname}
 </h:column>
 <h:column>
 <f:facet name="header">people</f:facet>
 <ui:repeat var="person" value="#{city.persons}">
 <h:outputText value="#{person.firstname} #{person.surname}"/>
 <br/>
 </ui:repeat>
 </h:column>
 </rich:dataTable>
</ui:define>
</ui:composition>

package com.seamtest;

import org.jboss.seam.annotations.In;
import org.jboss.seam.annotations.Name;
import org.jboss.seam.annotations.Transactional;
import org.jboss.seam.contexts.Contexts;
import org.jboss.seam.framework.EntityHome;

@Name("personHome")
public class PersonHome extends EntityHome<Person> {

 public void setPersonPersonid(Long id) {
 setId(id);
 }

 public Long getPersonPersonid() {
 return (Long) getId();
 }

 @Override
 protected Person createInstance() {
 Person person = new Person();
 return person;
 }

 public Person getDefinedInstance() {
 return isIdDefined() ? getInstance() : null;
 }

 @Override
 @Transactional
 public String persist() {
 String status = super.persist();
 Contexts.removeFromAllContexts("personHome");
 return status;
 }

}

package com.seamtest;
// Generated Apr 16, 2007 6:03:07 PM by Hibernate Tools 3.2.0.b9

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

import javax.persistence.CascadeType;
import javax.persistence.Column;
import javax.persistence.Entity;
import javax.persistence.FetchType;
import javax.persistence.Id;
import javax.persistence.JoinColumn;
import javax.persistence.ManyToOne;
import javax.persistence.OneToMany;
import javax.persistence.Table;

import org.hibernate.validator.NotNull;

/**
 * City generated by hbm2java
 */
@Entity
@Table(name = "CITY", catalog = "SEAMTEST")
public class City implements java.io.Serializable {

 private long cityid;
 private String cityname;
// private Set<Person> persons = new HashSet<Person>(0);
 private List<Person> persons = new ArrayList<Person>(0);

 public City() {
 }

 public City(long cityid) {
 this.cityid = cityid;
 }
 public City(long cityid, String cityname,
 List<Person> persons) {
 this.cityid = cityid;
 this.cityname = cityname;
 this.persons = persons;
 }

 @Id
 @Column(name = "CITYID", unique = true, nullable = false)
 @NotNull
 public long getCityid() {
 return this.cityid;
 }

 public void setCityid(long cityid) {
 this.cityid = cityid;
 }

 @Column(name = "CITYNAME")
 public String getCityname() {
 return this.cityname;
 }

 public void setCityname(String cityname) {
 this.cityname = cityname;
 }
 @OneToMany(cascade = CascadeType.ALL, fetch = FetchType.LAZY, mappedBy = "city")
 public List<Person> getPersons() {
 return this.persons;
 }

 public void setPersons(List<Person> persons) {
 this.persons = persons;
 }

}

Yes. I'm working my way through the Hibernate book so I'm not 100% that this is the correct way - but it works.

You need to explicitly add the PERSON to the Collection of PERSONs in the CITY when doing the persist. I'm not in front of my normal laptop but the code looks something like this:

@Override
@Transactional
public String persist() {
String status = super.persist();

getInstance().getCity().getPersons().add(getInstance());

Contexts.removeFromAllContexts("personHome");
return status;
}