title: Persisting ViewScoped beans across multiple views
body: <p>Ok I know scope questions come up all the time but I'm interested in a slightly different approach to the solution. The <code>@ViewScope</code> is a fantastic bridge between the <code>@RequestScope</code> and the <code>@SessionScope</code>. </p>
  
  <p>However there is still a common use case (at least for me) where I really don't want to use <code>@SessionScope</code> but I need the data over a couple of views. A really simple case is when I have multiple datatables chained together each one depending on previous selections.</p>
  
  <p>It's perfectly possible to use <code>&lt;f:paramView&gt;</code> and pass a single or even a couple of pieces of data as params in the address and then retrieve everything from the database again. I am more interested in finding a way of creating a 'snapshot' of the beans state / variables, creating the new <code>@ViewScope</code> and then 'restoring' the 'snapshot state' to the new bean.</p>
  
  <p>Does such a thing exist? Ideas? Opinions?</p>