I fill my business object by 'Select * from cowboys order by cow_lastname, cow_firstname' and then it comes in alphabetically. But when I add a new cowboy how do I keep the data in Alpha order? The form is a SF maintenance form but the navigation keys no longer work after I add a new cowboy. ???? TIA.

If you want to independently control the enabled state of that control, then you will want to set the IgnoreUIReadOnlyState to True on the control... this will cause the business object to leave it alone when it's enabling/disabling the controls when the object is edited/added/saved.  You would then need to control when that control is enabled.  I'm not sure what's causing it to think that the record is dirty, but if you disable the control when you're not wanting to edit the record, then it shouldn't copy any data back to the control.

If it's still causing you issues after you set the enabled state manually, then let me know.