1. A method of maintaining consistency of content of an object and metadata related to said object in a loose transaction model for object and meta-data updates, said method including the steps of: storing said related meta-data and a reference to said object in a table of a database, said object being stored externally to said database in an object store, said reference used to obtain a handle for directly accessing or manipulating said external object; obtaining a version number embedded in said handle; and comparing said embedded version number with a version number of a latest committed version of said externally stored object to determine if said handle refers to a current version of said externally stored object.