Store app settings in Database

Question

We have lot appSettings in our asp.net application. Is it a good idea to move them to database. I know one advantage is it is easy to maintain and do administrative activities. I need to know if someone has faced any issues.

Answer 1

We do not have any appsettings in the config but maintains a seperate DB table as the amount of configuration is huge. There is no issue with that. Of course we have to use some caching to prevent too much of queries related to config information.

Answer 2

There are a number of things you can do to reduce the number of app settings, and make them easier to maintain. Each of them has its own positive and negative. Moving them to a db is one, which can help to improve the maintainability ( and can allow you to build a front end to monitor and tweak them without requiring a recycle ). Alternatively, you might want to group some of them into custom sections, if they are related, and so make them better documented, and not just key value pairs.

If they go in the db, you need to consider caching them, and how you should manage the cache.

There is no general answer. It will depend on your situation.