Sharon, I had a thought about this, and while it isn't exactly what you wanted, it may work.
Create a serial (not persistent) class that contains all the properties of your current persistent class. Create a new persistent class, and embedd the serial class as it's only property. Now, when first get the data, you can create an instance of the serial class, then send the lookup/verification information to the third party system. When the response comes back, you can then either create a new instance of the persistent class, or retrieve the existing instance that the third party system redirects you to. You can then set the embedded serial object to the OREF of the serial object you already have open. This gets all the data in without having to copy all the data, and if you make changes to the serial class, it also will be there in the persistent class. The biggest downside is the additional element required to address each property of the serial class. Mark Sires
