I'm starting to write more and more web applications for work. Many of these web applications need to store the same types of data, such as location.

I've been thinking that it may be better to create a central db and store these "master" tables there and have each applicaiton access them.

I'm not sure how to go about this.

• Should I create tables in my application's db to copy the data from the master table and store in the app's table (for linking with other app tables using foreign keys)?

• Should I use something like a web service to read the data from the master table instead of firing up a new db connection in my app?

• Should I forget this idea and just store the data within my app's db?

I would like to have data such as the location central so I can go to one table and add a new location and the next time someone needs to select a location from one of the apps, the new one would be there.

I'm using ASP.NET MVC 1.0 to build the web apps and SQL 2005 as the db.

Need some advice... Thanks!