You are not correct about EDMS' (specifically PW) not handling live xref's. Projectwise addresses these x-ref concerns. AutoMeridian was the only one that was better, but I haven't seen the software for a while (5+ years).

You are right about ISO's, and ProjectWise handles this as well [or should I say doesn't handle this]. You can determine what and where, at a very granular level, how files are entered/mass imported/created. ISOGEN config files (if networked) would not be managed by ProjectWise (per se). But this is hardly the place for a full on EDMS discussion.

Who ever your dealing with can answer the non-CADWorx related concerns. Per CADWorx: It's associative application launcher is powerfull enough to script and accomplish a per client/job/database config "switcher".