hi,

Are you going to create records from XML and trying to filling selection field ?

thanks

Ok Dharmesh and Ray, I think I see the light (in OpenERP colors). I need a model for each of my pesky lookup tables. Then based on the XML snippet I posted above I create the records as found in crm_lead_data.xml e.g.

<!-- Crm stages -->
<record model="crm.case.stage" id="stage_lead1">
    <field name="name">New</field>
    <field eval="1" name="case_default"/>
    <field name="state">draft</field>
    <field eval="'10'" name="probability"/>
    <field eval="'10'" name="sequence"/>
    <field name="type">both</field>
</record>

Then implement a "default loader" as in crm.py e.g.

def _get_stage_common(self, cr, uid, context):
    ids = self.pool.get('crm.case.stage').search(cr, uid, [('case_default','=',1)], context=context)
    return ids

_defaults = {
    'active': 1,
    'stage_ids': _get_stage_common,
    'alias_domain': False, # always hide alias during creation
}

And define the proper column type e.g.

_columns = {
'stage_ids': fields.many2many('crm.case.stage', 'section_stage_rel', 'section_id', 'stage_id', 'Stages'),
}

And after all this I'll have a field that can hold selectable values which can be updated via the data.xml file. Is this correct?