In my current project, I create new objects, and the process of creating them compares them to a list of previous objects (based on object key).
However, I do not have the time to check every item in the database when I create new objects in order to assign a unique key, and I need to create several objects (including several key comparisons on the new objects) before I have a chance to merge anything. [The database is set to auto-assign key values when objects are persisted.]

Is there a command to assign a unique key value to an object without actually persisting it?