>Cool, let me know if it works out.

Drawback to the "stateful" web service scenario is that I'll have to build a single threaded server. Could become an issue with lots of users consuming the web service - hmmm. I'll see if I can get away from the statefulness - as you first suggested. I will still use the basic idea of a second object retaining properties, but the web service itself will need to be stateless.