Populating reference data (for dropdowns/picklists)

[somesh.m...@gmail.com]

Just starting to work on the platform - Trying to find out the best approach to capture reference data in the context of a custom application developed on the platform. For example, one of my custom application require a Country picklist - it is highly cumbersome to populate the country picklist manually considering the number of possible options on the dropdown.

I believe any method/solution to do this which involves a remote call is not a performance feasible option either.

Please suggest and thanks in advance!

[st...@busigeeks.com]

Is there  way of caching a web service result for this?