Chapter 18: Configuration for .NET Applications

Controlling the Behavior of Your Application Using Various Customization Features

The term "configuration" represents an area of concern that surrounds every software development effort, on the mainframe and off the mainframe. Generally speaking, configuration touches on those "extra" tasks that are needed for con trolling and influencing the behavior of your application. Typically, this type of behavior control and influence is addressed outside of your basic code development.

I have split the broad topic of configuration into five focused subtopics in this chapter. The first of those five subtopics is the use of Web page and user control directives. The second is custom attributes and reflection. XML-based files' con figuration files is the third subtopic. The fourth subtopic is what is known as the .NET Framework configuration namespaces. The fifth and final subtopic is the configuration concerns of code access security. I introduce the .NET Framework Configuration tool as part of that code access security discussion.

Note  

The discussions in this chapter, which cover various aspects of .NET application configuration, are more appropriate for someone who has achieved a considerable level of comfort with the material in most of the chapters that preceded this chapter.