Alexandre,

I don't know of any specific article or URL that discusses this, but I can tell you what I do.

I have a series of tables that change maybe once every 2 weeks or so, and are frequently used for picklists, lookups, etc. What I do is the following

1) First time user ever logs on (brand new user), the data tables are brought down from the database to the app.
2) User runs the software, then closes the app...we write out these tables as an XML file
3) User opens the software next day...we compare the most recent date/time for each table (in the xml file) against the back-end...if no updates have been done, we load the XML into memory...much faster than reloading from the database
4) If the last update date/time is MORE recent on the server, we either just bring the entire thing down (if it's fairly small), or scan through the rows that have been changed/inserted and just bring those down (if it's not so small).

So basically it's a synchronization process. At first I thought it would be rough to maintain, but it's worked out pretty well.

This all assumes that an XML preferences file can be stored on the user's local drive. (I'm assuming your talking about some type of smart-client, winform front-end, talking to a web server/web app).

hope that helps...I've been doing that for a few years now and it works fine for my situations...
Kevin