thanks Michael,
Read the post but it's a bit different from my problem. Send email to guys in the second link you provided -- hopefully it will help.
I did however found a discussion on Russian forum about this (
http://www.javable.com/forum/thread.jspa?forumID=3&threadID=8267&messageID=29143)
and it says that in AttributiveCellTableModel where setDataVector() method is overloaded setDataVector() calls setColumnIdentifiers() and setColumnIdentifiers() in return calls setDataVector() so we have infinite recursion and thus java.lang.StrackOverflow is thrown. Not sure why this works in 1.3 though.
All right brain, you don't like me and I don't like you, but let's just do this one thing so I can get back to killing you with beer.<br /> <br />- Homer Simpson