Unraveling the Mysteries of .NET 2.0 Configuration
Thanks a million to Jon Rista for this "bible" on .Net 2.0 configuration!
One of the wonderful features of .NET has been its XML configuration features. In the days of .NET 1.x, common application settings, database connection strings, ASP.NET web server configuration, and basic custom configuration data could be stored in a .config file. Custom configuration sections could use a few basic but custom structures, allowing a small variety of information to be stored in a .config file. More complex configuration, however, was most often accomplished with custom XML structures and custom parsing code. Such code could become quite complex, though, and there are a variety of ways of differing performance to accomplishing the same thing.
With .NET 2.0, the days of writing your own (probably complicated, poorly-performing, and tedious) code to manage custom XML configuration structures are over. The custom configuration capabilities of the built-in XML configuration subsystem in .NET 2.0 have been greatly revamped, boasting some extremely useful and time saving features. With relative ease, just about any XML configuration structure you might need is possible with a relatively minimal amount of work. In addition, deserialization of the XML in a .config file can always be overridden. This allows any XML structure necessary to be supported without loosing the other advanced features of .NET 2.0 configuration.