AAWS: EXT_DATA_NBR Updated on application save

Just wondering if anyone has any leads on this issue.

When using the AAWS web services, particularly SAD_SAVEAPPL, we are passing in academic history records, including EXT_ACAD_DATA entities. The EXT_DATA_NBR for the entities is set to a sequence number within the constituent record being staged (1, 2, 3, etc). When these entities are saved using SAD_SAVEAPPL, two things happen that we did not expect:

- The production record EXT_ACAD_DATA gets updated on every save for the staged application.

- The EXT_DATA_NBR on the production record is always incremented to <current-max-ext-data-nbr> + 1.

During testing, this lead to the situation where a test subject's EXT_ACAD_DATA record had been updated 999 times. Remember that the production record is being updated even on application save, which you would expect is just a staging activity. Nothing has been posted yet. On save #1000, the transaction handler failed with the message that it failed to "set field EXT_DATA_NBR on EXT_ACAD_DATA to "1000". Seeing how EXT_DATA_NBR is a char-3 field, this is not entirely surprising.