Java Web Application Configuration Patterns
Are there any patterns or best practices that can be used to simplify changing configuration profiles for java web applications across multiple environments. e.g. JDBC URLs, SOAP end-points, etc.
As a bit of background to help clarify my question, I work with several large java web applications that during any given release cycle move through 6 different environments; development, integration, QA, performance and eventually get deployed to multiple production servers. In each environment, configuration needs to change. Right now, most configuration changes for each deployment are done manually which is both time consuming and open to errors.
Is there any way to take the manual intervention out of this process?
Answer
I'm surprised that no one cited the Jakarta Commons Configuration API (http://commons.apache.org/configuration/) to answer this question. It allows you to have a hierarchy of files (or other configuration sources like XML, JNDI, JDBC, etc.). That's what Jeremy Seghi was talking about and it gives you a good way to have both defaults and local overrides as well.
The best part is that it is a tested working solution so you don't have to go craft something yourself.