The sample application has it´s own message handling implementation which provides a correlation between the user interface and data transfer objects. It uses composite components to detect validation errors and then display them on the offending component using a panelToolTip. This works when outside of an ice:dataTable but not within and a javascript error is thrown. For example:

<cc:validationGroup>
<ice:dataTable>
    <ice:column>
<f:facet name="header">
<ice:outputText id="column3" value="#{msgs_validation.city}" />
</f:facet>
<cc:tooltip for="city">
<ice:inputText id="city" value="#{partner.city}" valueChangeListener="#{validationCtrl.removeCurrentMessage}" onkeyup="iceSubmitPartial(form,this,event);"/>
</cc:tooltip>
   </ice:column>
</ice:dataTable>
</cc:validationGroup>

This works in FF and but not in versions of IE. In IE7/8, the offending field is highlighted in yellow but the tool tip is not displayed and following javascript error is thrown:

Message: Object required
Line: 1
Char: 77237
Code: 0
URI: http://localhost:8280/riweb-presentation/javax.faces.resource/icefaces-compat.js.xhtml;jsessionid=F8670CC02B5CE698C8B8C0BB6AD4E0F5

In IE9, the validation error does not even occur in order to reproduce the issue and the following javascript error is thrown:

SCRIPT5007: Unable to get value of the property 'parentNode': object is null or undefined 
icefaces-compat.js.xhtml, line 1 character 77237

Both errors correspond to the following code in icefaces-compat.js:

if(element.parentNode){do{valueT+=element.offsetTop||0;valueL+=element.offsetLeft||0;element=element.offsetParent;}while(element);}return new Element.Offset(valueL,valueT);}