Re: Init file package avail?

["Nick Roberts" <nickroberts@adaos.worldonline.co.uk>]

This may be redundant, but have you considered keeping your configuration
data in a database? Your program would then retrieve this data using an
appropriate database interface.

The advantages of this approach is that you then have all the data
management facilities of a database system to bring to bear on the
configuration data. This could make it significantly easier to enter, to
print (report on), to query (e.g. to check for errors), to manipulate (e.g.
update computing certain changes), to backup, and so on.

The disadvantages are fairly obvious: you need a database system (deployable
on your targets); you need to know (learn) how to use (and program) the
database system; you need to have an Ada interface to it; and so on.

One other thing I would recommend is to 'pot' your configuration code (e.g.
in a library package) in such a way that switching to a database
implementation (or a different file format, or whatever) won't require
changes to your main code (only to the config package body).

Yet another thought is the use of a 'Comma Separated Variable-length' (CSV)
file format.

--
Best wishes,
Nick Roberts



"Paul F. Pearson" <ppearson@hiwaay.net> wrote in message
news:c1655c76.0111301354.6a4455e5@posting.google.com...
> Is there a package available to handle reading in from an
> intialization file? Preferrably, I'd like one that handles sections
> ...