This is the second part of my thoughts on good operational software.  For part one, go back one post to here.

Second, is separating out configuration management from software development. Like logging, this one is easy on the surface; it’s pretty trivial to separate out the main configuration parameters into a configuration file rather than hard coding everything. The most interesting thing about this, however, is that it exposes dependencies in an explicit way. For example, if an application is dependent on a database connection, then there must be configuration related to that database – the host, port, database name, user, and (hopefully encrypted or obscured) the password. Continue reading Good Operational Software – Part 2 →