Configuration management is one of the biggest problems of enterprise .NET applications. Since the first release of the .NET framework, configuration has been the main mechanism used by developers to model aspects of applications in a declarative way.

So what’s wrong with .NET configuration?

Reusability

Do you find yourself copying the same configurations sections over and over and over again to the different applications in your enterprise? You are not along.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could reuse the same configuration section across different configuration files without having to recreate the same configuration section 200 different times?

Usage tracking

How many times do we modify a configuration file and broke a component we didn’t know was using that file?

What if I could have a catalog that keeps track of which components are using the different sections in a configuration file?

Change Management

Who changed that configuration section? That’s a hard question to answer nowadays ;). Wouldn’t it be great if we could keep track of who created and modified different sections of a configuration file?

Versioning

We changed a configuration file and we broke an application that was using it, can we roll back to a previous version? Can we compare changes against a previous version? Hmmm….

What if we could keep track of the different versions of a configuration file and the sections within it and we could easily switch back and forth between versions?

Authoring

Creating configuration files and sections is still as painful as in the early .NET days. Normally, that process that requires developers to do frequent internet searches to figure out the correct configuration syntax.

What if we could author a configuration file by dragging pre-configured sections and templates?

Security

.NET configurations could be the ideal place to store some sensitive information but security gets in the way.

Why can’t we have a model on which we can encrypt on-demand different sections of a configuration section so that they can only be accessed by the users or applications with the right permissions.

Tired of dealing with configuration hell? We were too! And then we created TeleSharp

TeleSharp addresses the configuration management challenges in enterprise .NET applications by providing a centralized repository to manage and reuse your configuration sections. In the current version, TeleSharp enables the following capabilities.

Configuration Catalog

Using TeleSharp you can organize, tag and catalog the different configuration files and sections as well as the different  application components that depend on them.

Configuration File Authoring

TeleSharp includes a super simple configuration editor that allows developers and ITPros to author configuration files by dragging preconfigured sections.

Versioning

TeleSharp allows you to maintain different versions of configuration files and sections making it really simple to keep track of the configuration changes throughout the lifecycle of an application.

Publishing

TeleSharp enables the automatic publishing of a configuration file to multiple servers. Using this feature, you can automate the publication of configuration files on a periodical basics.

Security

Usign TeleSharp, you can encrypt different sections of a configuration file so that its only available to the users or applications with the right privileges.

Visual Studio Integration

TeleSharp configuration integrates natively with Visual Studio enabling developers to import, export, and reuse configuration management directly from their development environment.

What’s next?

Please contact us to start trying TeleSharp today and register for the first TeleSharp webinar next Wednesday!

• Jesus Rodriguez's blog