Configuration files registry

Configuration files & registry

Many custom and commercial frameworks have a mechanism to save user preference and application settings to a system table or to the Windows ‚ Registry. New applications do not have to deal with updating these settings, but further updates to the application will likely require a program or a step in the installation process to add new options and default values.

If you are using one of the many installation routines we have discussed in Chapter 4: ‚“Setup Tool Roundup ‚½ or even the older Visual FoxPro Setup Wizard, updates to tables can be handled with a program that is fired from the post-setup executable. Registry entries can also be handled in a similar program as well. Most modern commercial installation routine tools provide a Windows ‚ Registry key creation and value updater built into the product. This saves you the extra step of rolling your own program and is a little bit cleaner because the failure errors are handled right in the setup and do not have the second process executed. If you save settings and configuration items to a table, you need a program to handle the update.