Robert, Another high quality response, thank you.
Let me respond briefly, selectively to your reply... > - The parameters x, y & z will be initialized to known values. > - The values of x, y & z are normally fixed, but can be altered by users > (administrators) at runtime. Yes, very infrequently, e.g., once a year, parameters used as constants in application computations will change and will need to be changed by an administrator. So, these parameters are global. > 1. Use a configuration file to store key/value pairs <...> Use a > configuration file (YAML). If the administrator needs to change the > configuration then just update the file with the new parameter. You will > also like want to cache these values in some form of memory cache so you > don't have to read the values from disk/database on every request. Take > a look at memcached. I agree with you that this is likely the best approach for my situation. Borrowing from http://railsforum.com/viewtopic.php?id=15295, I might read/write to my file via the following mechanism: a_config = YAML.load_file "#{RAILS_ROOT}/config/application.yml" a_config["user"]["pwd_days"] = params[:days] File.open("#{RAILS_ROOT}/config/application.yml", 'w') { |f| YAML.dump(a_config, f) } Look good? Two final questions for you: 1. Regarding the use of memcached for efficiency, it is a efficiency option available for flat file and database persisted data, alike, right? So, I might look forward to its use in varied manner of performance tuning? 2. > In all of these cases you could use seeds.rb to initialize your values. So, seeds is kind of like providing a user with a place to start, e.g., standardized settings, that they may then wish to change? It is not really for classic configuration, i.e., it does not involve global settings. Grar -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en.
