ooGlossary.comTransient objects are objects which live for a short period of time and which you may well create multiple times. For instance, if you were to get a list of users from the database for a particular user request, you might want to encapsulate that recordset in an object. That would be a transient object as its only job is to take the user list from the model and to pass it to the view. At the end of the page request the object is thrown away and then if you want a list of users down the line, you'll go back to the UserService and it'll give you a new user collection with the appropriate recordset.
Words from Peter Bell: http://lightwire.riaforge.org/blog/index.cfm/2006/10/22/Getting-Started-With-LightWire