From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,7624df5e57d09688 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-06-13 07:33:38 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!canoe.uoregon.edu!hammer.uoregon.edu!skates!not-for-mail From: Stephen Leake Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: config files proposal Date: 13 Jun 2002 10:15:58 -0400 Organization: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (skates.gsfc.nasa.gov) Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: anarres.gsfc.nasa.gov Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: skates.gsfc.nasa.gov 1023978196 19613 128.183.220.71 (13 Jun 2002 14:23:16 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@news.gsfc.nasa.gov NNTP-Posting-Date: 13 Jun 2002 14:23:16 GMT User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:25869 Date: 2002-06-13T14:23:16+00:00 List-Id: antonio_duran@hotmail.com (Antonio Duran) writes: > Form my point of view, in some cases it could be necessary/interesting > to keep configuration information confidential and to provide the > means to check the integrity of a configuration file. I'm not clear what you mean by "confidential". Clearly, the application program that uses the config file must be able to read it. If you mean that no other process/person should be able to read it, that would be up to the operating system. If the OS provides access controls to files, you can enforce confidentiality. I think that issue has to be outside the scope of the Config_Files API, since it depends heavily on the OS, and we want the Config_Files API to be OS independent. As for checking the integrity of the config file, that could be done with an XML DTD and a validating parser. Come to think of it, that is an advantage of using XML that I had not considered. Although, a non-XML parser could also check integrity to the same degree. Hmm. I'm not clear what you mean by "integrity". XML DTD's allow specifying what values must be present, and to some extent what type they are. In other situations, "integrity" might mean a version control revision number, or a checksum, or something similar. -- -- Stephe