There are actually 3 parts to this question. I have found a solution to each.
The first part is how to create a new simulation given the data for a simulation, server, load and buffer. I resolved this in my simulations_controller#create method. The trick linking up the newly created entities (server, load, buffer) to the new simulation. I discovered that the << operator does not work the way that I expected it to after reading the documentation, so I got rid of that and set the foreign key id in code . Here's a snippet which creates the simulation and the buffer: @simulation = Simulation.new(sim_hash) @simulation.user_id = current_user.id @simulation.save! #need to save to get the id from the database buf = Buffer.new(buf_hash) buf.name='Queue1' [email protected] buf.save! Because save! returns an exception if it fails, I surround the whole sequence with a rescue block to catch an ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid exception. The second problem is that my server and load were failing validation. This was a problem with the data from my ComboBox items. When using SelectedItem we get a hash that contains the ComboBox's internal id, the label and the value. I had to extract the value out of that when sending the data using my HTTPService. Once I got just the value from the ComboBox and not the whole object, the items passed validation. The 3rd problem here is that IE returns a 2032 Stream Error when status code 201 is returned from the POST. (FireFox doesn't do this). The last line of the log file on my original post is: 0.12400 (65%) | 201 Created [http://localhost/simulations.xml] The symptom of this is that the data is saved correctly to the database, but I still get a 2032 Stream Error on the UI after I click the save button. When I reload the application, the new data is there; when I explore my data base, the data is there, but I get that nasty 2032 error and my UI is in an inconsistent state. For a solution to this problem, see my post at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/354936/flex-2032-stream-error-in-ie-only LG Rains
