Hi Martin,
Have you consider to maintain these values with the value mapping concept?.
Wiki http://wiki.sdn.sap.com/wiki/display/XI/Value+mapping
Sukumar Natarajans 'blog http://scn.sap.com/people/sukumar.natarajan/blog/2006/10/23/accessing-value-mapping-defined-in-directory-using-java-functions
Regards.