Reference lost between parent & child window.

Hello,

I've got this main window with a form opening a child window with
another form. Now I want to copy an input value from the child window
back to the parent window. That's not a problem at all using
window.opener. But the problem is that the child window, before it
posts back the values to it's parent window needs to post these values
to a database. Now, that's not a problem either, but it seems that the
reference is lost between child & parent window after the values have
been added to the database.

Now, the real-world example:

I've got a form on my main page with article input fields. One of
these fields is a drop down box containing authors. Now I want the
user to be able to add another author to this drop down box.

This is not that hard, I just open a child window, the user enters a
new author, this author is created in the database and the ID of the
author is returned. This ID I want to post back to the parent window,
but that's the part that does not work.

Is there a way to keep the reference even if the child window has been
refreshed?

Thanks,

Barton