In my last position, I wrote a data entry system to handle the processing of 90+ million rebates a year. There is no way I'd write a high volume data capture system using web technology. Yes, even if the system must be highly distributed. We had 4000+ users who were based in argentina, india, mexico and the US. We used Microsoft's ClickOnce technology and found it reliable enough to meet our needs . There are other ClickOnce-ish technologies out there which, in my opinion, eliminate much of the administrative nightmares client based systems are known for. If you're after effecient data entry, the client needs to be smart. Also, data validation should be as data is entered and should not require a round trip to the server for each entry. If you think validation on a page-basis is a good method then you've never really done data entry ;P . Using a windows form, where all the system's resources can be accessed, all data can be cached locally and the server need only be pinged once the entire batch of data is captured. This design made the system highly scalable. Yes, be careful how you cache the data from the security and disaster perspective. So, in this context, CMS/CRM systems do require some data entry but not at the volume I outlined above. I recommend (depending on the release timing of your project) that the product be developed using Silverlight 2. That way you get the best of both worlds where you can build some smartness into the form, utilize some local resource and still have browser goodness/familiarity.
Joel Palmer Data Integration Engineer
