In the Williams application, there is a component at the top affecting the state of the ace:datatable:

<f:ajax render="@form :WgpMainMessageNotificationBarStatus" execute="@this"
listener="#{confirmationPdaBean.confirmingLevelChange}">
<h:selectOneMenu id="confirmingLevelFilter" label="Confirming Level" rendered="#{!confirmationPdaBean.downloadPages}"
value="#{confirmationPdaBean.confirmingLevelFilterObject}" required="true"
onchange="showProcessingMessage('Processing Filter Change')">
<f:selectItem itemValue="#{null}" itemLabel="NONE SELECTED"
noSelectionOption="true" />
<f:selectItems value="#{confirmationPdaBean.confirmingLevelItems}" />
</h:selectOneMenu>
</f:ajax>

The listener is changing the value of the ace:dataTable to a datatable with more columns. When the update is applied, only the previous number of columns are displayed and the final column spans the width of the other headers (see attached screenshot).

The empty space in the datatable should be populated with content.