UI Design: Edit then List vs List then Edit

Here is a little summary of the article:
When you build a "data oriented" aplication (your typical mostly CRUD application) the workflow goes more or less like this:
List then Edit
-You see a list of objects (for example the catalog of products in amazon)
-You select an object and a windows to modify appears in front of you (you Edit it, to modify it propertys, for example when you select a Contact to change its address in Outlook)
or perhaps the UI follows Edit then List:
-You see an empty and disabled window that could be used to edit an objects, the only buttons that work are "new" and "search"
-If you click "search" you are presented with a window to search (the List) after finding the record you want to work with, you click "accept" in the List window
-You return to the Editor window that now is enabled and allows you to edit the selected record.
Sometimes, both views (the List and the Editor) are visible at the same time like in the Two-Panel Selector pattern (there is a link in the article in my blog)
After describing this two "patterns" the article focuses on how the way we chose to organize data oriented UIs affects the services our persistency mechanisms need to provide....
Do you think I should add screenshots to make things more clear?...
(I dont know if there is much common ground on this subject)

I think it dpends on how much experience the developer has in the field where his application will be deployed. Take for instance a warehouse where employees (pickers and packers) who need to keep the flow going, the "List then Edit" will be much more acceptable in such enviornment.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnwui/html/iuiguidelines.asp sure sounds similar ...

Also you will find many business apps for the list then edit methodology as it often makes more sense and its a bit easier to do in a generic sense.

also

and perhaps get ideas to build some kind of framework on top of NHibernate that make it easier to manipulate persistent objects

see castle project .. They have already done activerecord on top of nhibernate and can dynamically generate list/edit screens for the activerecord classes.

Cheers,

Greg
MVP-C#