Can't reference "Country" table in choice list

[gpopp]

Hi Everyone,

Our instance is at the Eureka release. We're trying to add a field to the "Location" table that is a reference to the OOTB ISO country code table we found. Why? Well, the "Country" field in the "Location" table is a free-form string which allows for fat fingering and other user error. Referencing the ISO countries eliminates this problem and normalizes the data. I can't imagine why it wasn't this way OOTB, but I digress...

In creating this field we used the type "Choice" and selected advanced options to use the "Choice Table" reference picker. Imagine our surprise when the table "Country" (core_country) is NOT a selectable item in this list. I tried adding Country in the table view in the reference column. That actually worked to my surprise...but not really. The behavior was quite bizarre. I'd get the desired drop-down in form-edit view, but in list edit view I got an empty list. If I set a value in form-edit view, the list edit view displayed the sys_id of the reference.

Does anyone know why the OOTB country table is not available as a choice list reference and is there any way to get around this?

Thanks in advance!

[christen_mitche]

Since Country (core_country) is another table you would want to add it to the Location as a Reference and not a Choice.   Generally when you make a Choice field and use the Advanced options of specifying a Choice table you would also specify a field on that table that is a Choice field so you can re-use the choices from that field.  

The fact that the Choice field is not made mandatory seems to be a bug.

[gpopp]

Ah...I was vaguely suspicious that one could only reference a choice field in another table and not just any field. Thank you very much for setting me straight.

Given this limitation, I agree that I shouldn't be presented with fields that are NOT themselves choice fields when referencing another table. Seems like a bug.