Store dotnet app settings in database instead of app.config

Question

I have stored all my application (key-value pair) settings in the app.config so far in my Windows Forms application. I'd like to change it, because

• I should store settings by user (NOT win user, but my app user)
• there are some confidential settings that must be stored
• I have several clients, that connects to the same db, so one app user can log in from any client
• there can be problems writing to config files, cause app folder fro a given windows user can be read-only

Using config for this purpose is very comfortable, but I can not work with it on because of these problems.

My question is, if there is an out-of-the box or well tested, widely used library/class/way that can read/write key-value pair settings from a database?

Answer 1

You can look out the Cinchoo Framework. You can do it using 'Configuration Storage Plug-in', which is the extension of Cinchoo configuration framework. Using it you can write your own custom configuration piug-in and use them in your application. Hope it helps.

Answer 2

If I understand your problem correctly, you want to store per-user configuration information for your application. You might want to try ASP.NET Profile Properties (available since 2.0). The functionality dovetails nicely with the Role Provider, which is commonly used for security.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/2y3fs9xs.aspx.