Applications often need to have configuration information to specify how they run. This configuration information may set paths for files, turn on or off optional behavior, provide port numbers for sockets or specify user ids and filenames. If your system is comprised of several applications, you may need to configure each of them individually. Since they form one coherent system, many of the parameters from one application need to match the parameters from another. In this case, it may be a good idea to develop one master configuration source. This source is one single place where all the configuration parameters are placed and where each parameter is only specified once. This source might be a database, XML files, INI files or simply code. You would create and edit configuration parameters in this one master source. From that source, you can either read the parameters from each individual application or you can automatically extract separate configuration files for each application. The objective is to have one master source where all of this information is managed and automatic mechanisms to get this information to the applications that need it. Without one master source, you'll have configuration parameters scattered throughout multiple systems and it will become increasingly difficult to manage them all.
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