On Tue, 9 Dec 1997, Sean Witham wrote:

> Where there are databse lookups the databases are built from editable
> ascii files. If this philosphy was maintained could a scheme be
> developed that was acceptable ?

Oh, probably. Possibly even if this wasn't maintained.

We all agree that some nice directory and configuration services
would be nice. It's the implementation that's going to provoke the
arguments: the devil is in the details.

So here are some of the advantages I see of the Unix way of doing
things (versus the Novell bindery and the Windows 95/NT registry):

1. Files are easily readable/editable by humans, and easily munged
with regular Unix tools (sed, awk, rcs, etc.).

2. Applications generally don't/can't fiddle with the configuration
of other applications or other parts of the system.

3. If corruption of configuration data occurs, it's unlikely to
affect more than one application/subsystem.

4. One doesn't need anything more than tar to pack up an application
and all its configuration information and take it elsewhere.

cjs

Curt Sampson    cjs@portal.ca	   Info at http://www.portal.ca/
Internet Portal Services, Inc.	   Through infinite myst, software reverberates
Vancouver, BC  (604) 257-9400	   In code possess'd of invisible folly.