Configuration Data!

it has been kind slow the past couple of weeks, maybe because it is summer :)

anyway today i am talking about configuration: first let us start with who consumes configuration

- Adapters
- Pipelines
- Orchs

let us start one by one
Your adapters will need to consume some configuration data, starting from debug flags to some processing related flags. the first question is who will run your adapters is it BTS services or IIS or your own custom process:

• if it's BTS: You are left either with editing BTSNTSVC.EXE.CONFIG to have your configuration, but carefull not to mess BTS configuration. or you can use Enterprise Library Configuration Block which work just fine.
• if it's IIS: Something like the SOAP or HTTP adapter, well alot of us neglects the fact that ASP.NET runtime will run our code (adapter in this case) which means youn can leaverge ASP.NET runtime configuration tools (Web.Config) or even use the HTTPContext classes.
• if it is your process: well you can do whatever you want but a strong advice go for Configuration block it really comes handy, and hey it is free ;)

as for pipelines: well the same as the adapter really applies on pipelines. which is good because the same approch can be resued all over again.

finally the orchs: if it is simple configuration (Text fields) i stronglly recomment using Const members on exeternal classes since it is very fast however, beaware that .NET compilers replaces those with the actual text upon compiling - that is a tip from a good guy i know :) - so if it is better using static properties as the compilers doesn't replace those. again if you have to save configuration you can edit BTSNTSVC.EXE.CONFIG or use the configuration block.

well that was just some thoughts that i did like to share with you.. hope they help.

Kal