Configuration Management Application Block

Question

Anyone have any experience using the Microsoft Configuration Management Application Block? This is an older piece of code off of their website, but seems like it might be useful as a standard way of storing/reading configuration values for .Net applications. Is it a good/bad tool, overkill, what better options might be available in more recent versions of the framework, etc?

Thanks in advance for any replies.

Answer 1

I've never felt limited by .NET's standard Configuration features. Simple configuration is easily handled with appSettings and connectionString sections - encrypt-able if necessary.

For custom configuration, try this: http://haacked.com/archive/2007/03/12/custom-configuration-sections-in-3-easy-steps.aspx.

And if you need to store configuration data elsewhere, consider redirecting by implementing your own ProtectedConfigurationProvider:

• http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/Section/Redirecting-Configuration-with-a-Custom-Provider.id-291932.html
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/wfc2t3az.aspx
• http://www.blayd.co.uk/article.aspx?pageid=1012#sectionSix

Answer 2

Thanks for the reply.

I've located some additional resources on .Net configuration that have been helpful to me:

• http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/mysteriesofconfiguration2.aspx
• http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/mysteriesofconfiguration.aspx
• http://www.codeproject.com/KB/dotnet/mysteriesofconfiguration3.aspx

My interest in the MS Configuration Management App block was something that could be dropped into apps and used without too much "rolling your own". It is old though (.Net 1.1) and dropped from MS Enterprise Libraries starting with v2. So, something more up to date would be nice. One thing I liked about it was the ability to read/write configuration info to specified XML files or registry, not the program's app.config file. My project requires sharing some configuration info between multiple applications, so locating it all in the app.config file is a problem, and I'd rather avoid the registry as much as possible. However, the OpenExeConfiguration(string exePath) method seems promising for accessing shared configuration data among multiple applications from a specified config file. Each could store its own specific configuration data in its own app.config as well. Does this seem like a reasonable approach?