As per suggestion above, I have read up on Singleton. This proved to be very interesting reading indeed.

"The instance() method is used to create a new Class::Singleton instance, or return a reference to an existing instance. Using this method, it is only possible to have a single instance of the class in any system."

But it is not the solution to my situation. I want the object to exist in one instance per application within the system. Not one instance per system.

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Everything went worng, just as foreseen.