Selenium not able to load dynamic options in a dropdown - selenium

Question

Options for a dropdown on a webpage I am testing are dependent upon the values supplied for earlier textboxes and selects (E.g. based on the currency and amount specified, dropdown for product will show appropriate values. With no values, the supplied the dropdown is blank.).
Now, although I have provided the values for currency and amount, the product dropdown is still blank. It is not fetching the filtered values based on earlier data supplied. I am using Selenium server (2.24.1) and writing scripts in Java in Eclipse with TestNG and testing on IE8.
When inspected, the dropdown is no different from others, only its options change based on the values of other elements on the page. The web application is developed in Java (Wicket framework).
The Selenium code:
selenium.select(ownerBranch, "label=4521 - Branch one");
selenium.select(currency, "label=SEK - Swedish kronor");
Thread.sleep(sleep);
selenium.type(amountSantioned,"100000");
Thread.sleep(sleep);
selenium.click(chooseLoanTermBymatDate);
Thread.sleep(sleep);
timeNow=Calendar.getInstance();
timeNow.add(Calendar.DATE,+360);selenium.type(maturityDate,dateformat.format(timeNow.getTime()));
Thread.sleep(sleep);
selenium.type(amountSantioned,"100000");
Thread.sleep(sleep);
selenium.select(serviceDelChannel, "label=BackOffice");
Thread.sleep(sleep);
selenium.select(product, "label=");
Thread.sleep(sleep*2);
selenium.select(product,"label=LN7292 - Consumer loan for Year2026");
Thread.sleep(sleep);

Answer 1

I'm not going to try to reproduce the issue (if you can point me to a publicly visible site with similar behaviour, I might test it), so I'm only taking a guess here:
Since Selenium RC is written in pure Javascript and "only" firing change events on selecting values from drop-downs, Wicket is probably waiting for something else or relying on a completely different mechanism.
Things you can try:
Use Selenium WebDriver. Selenium RC has been deprecated for over a year now, because it had serious technical limitations (you might have just bumped into one) that are now solved by WebDriver. Also, you won't ever have to use Thread.sleep() again (although I'm almost sure it could be got rid of even here, mostly). This solution is the most painful, but is almost guaranteed to work well, because WebDriver behaves like a real user.
Call selenium.fireEvent() on all the input elements you're interacting with. Useful events might be focus, blur, maybe even click in between them.
Calling selenium.keyPressNative(String.valueOf(KeyEvent.VK_ENTER)) (presses Enter natively) after you every change of a dropdown. If the changed dropdown is not focused before this, you might need to focus() it beforehand.
The painful way that tries to simulate user's behaviour as close as possible instead of using JS methods: Instead of using select(), try to focus() a dropdown element, then select one of its options by pressing Down arrow repeatedly, then Enter.