Update display name of approval/request to something sensible

I'm trying to update the display name / request summary to something that's easy to understand to the approver. Their is currently no template meachanism to support this.

I've tried to update the request's displayname in a workflow activity, however the update is in the request history but still the old hard to understand request summary is displayed.

Then I figured out that the approval object has an attribute request, after which I tried to get the object using various query combination using wsenum. Without success.

Being desperate, I decided to update the database directly, with success. IS THEIR ANOTHER WAY TO THIS? I Would prefer to do this using the normal platform service.