Rules of Thumb

Configuration settings should have configurable defaults at the module, ear, server and cluster level (when clustering is added). For example, security settings should be configurable on a per ejb, ejb jar, ear and server levels.

Settings should have a smooth increase in complexity from very simple to complex. For example, a cache setting could start with a simple max-size, and over time the user could increase the complexity by adding configuration for disk paging up to specification of complex flushing rules.

Applications should be fully validated before handing it off to the deployment system. This vastly simplifies the deployment system because it assumes that an application is valid. As a corollary, the deployment system should not be complicated with code that tests for invalid deployments or with code to print graceful error messages to a user.