title: Webbased or Thick-client through VPN?
body: <p>In an electric company where I was hired temporarily, we have to implement an upgrade of the billing and payments system ( the current system is a dbaseIII system). The company's programmer and I have decided to use VB.Net and MySQL. </p>
  
  <p>The company served several towns and have billing and payments centers in selected towns. Every billing period, the meter readers would read the readings for every electric meters and then write the readings in the sheet. Every 5 pm, an employee from the centers would collect the sheets and then travel to the main center where the readings are encoded. </p>
  
  <p>The billings are printed in the main center, and then distributed to the branches.</p>
  
  <p>During discussions with General Manager and heads of the company, the two of us are tasked to take advantage of the internet because those towns where the centers are located have internet connectivity, and for those none, we can use the mobile internet.</p>
  
  <p>The new system will allow users to enter the readings, and then send the data to the main server in the main branch. They also have the ability to download and print the billings.</p>
  
  <p>Our problem now is what type of system we have to implement. Should it be web based or a desktop application that will connect to our database server through vpn.</p>