Parameter Issues When Returning Null Records

Hi,

I'm running into an issue where if a report retrieves 0 records, I run into an error. My report has 2 queries-- the main query to retrieve Account information and the other to return Contact information based on the contact id(s) returned by the Account query. The reason needing two separate queries is that the contact and account tables are on different databases.

Now here is my account query: select contact_id, username, password from account.
My contact query looks like this: select name, address, .... from contact where contact_id = @contact_id.

In my report parameters, I define contact_id like this:
*******************************************
name = contact_id
data type = integer
prompt = [blanked out]
hidden = checked
internal = checked
multi-value = unchecked
allow null value = checked
allow blank value = unchecked

available values:
from query: dataset = account
value field = contact_id

label field = contact_id

default values:
from query: dataset = account
value field = contact_id
**********************************************

Now, when I run my report and knowing there are no records, I get the following error: "The 'contact_id' parameter is missing a value". Any ideas on how to solve this issue? Thanks.

larry