I have been writing an application that is going to use both User and Global configurations. The User config I have no problem with. I am using the Preferences API in JDK1.4 for that. What I need help on is how to emplement the global preferences because these have to be global on everyone using the application. I know I could provide those preferences with each application, but I would rather have a config file somewhere that all the applications pull info from, that way if I need to make changes to it, I don't have to update all the users PC's. All these applications run on an intranet in my company and I have access to several servers. This application is Help Desk software. I would like ideas on the best way to implement global preferences that can be accessed and modified from a single location. Is simply writing some file IO and pulling the info through a stream the best bet? That was my first thought. Thanks.
Sounds like a job for a web service! Or you can set the file up on a web server and read it by opening a URL to the file. But I think a web service would be more fun to code.
Could you explain a little more about what you mean by web service? By the way, the Database is running on a Linux box and Tomcat is running as my web server because I do have a web front end for the database for pulling some reports via servlets.
Well, I thought I would let anyone know what I decided to do about this. Since I am using a database anyway, I am going to store all global preferences in a Table and give the users ReadOnly rights to that table. I am still open for better suggestions though.