Well, it is basically finished and working, combining a visible Product interface and a counter tag... But, overriding __setstate__, removing the temporary entry from the state, and called Persistent.__setstate__, while generating no errors, fails to prevent the temporary entry from being written into the database. Please help, I need two answers! 1. How can I create a variable within a Product that will not be persistent (i.e. will not be written to disk)? 2. What function is called at normal shutdown? I need to call a function at shutdown to move the current value from temp to real. Note: The counter is usable as is, so if the list members think that Paul's now repudiated fear of constant disk growth is a non-issue, I could drop the temporary variable, and just keep the advantages of the interface, and the potential for an SQL based backend whilst keeping the same front-end. Thanks again. Howard C. Shaw III Programmer/SysAdmin St. Thomas High School