NGWS SDK Documentation  

This is preliminary documentation and subject to change.
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Hierarchical Configuration Architecture

As mentioned earlier, there can be multiple configuration files located in different directories on the server. When a request arrives for a particular URL, ASP+ computes the settings for that URL in a hierarchical fashion, using the configuration files located in the path for the requested URL.

For example, there might be a web site with the following file structure:

Where the administrator wants to configure the application settings to allow all users to have access to the Application Root directory, but allow only selected users to have access to the two subdirectories:

Assume that there is a Config.web file in the SubDir1 directory and none in the Application Root or SubDir2 directories. In this case there are actually two Config.web files that are being used. The highest-level file is the one located in the %windir%\Complus\Version directory. This file is said to be at the machine level, and all ASP+ directories and subdirectories inherit its settings. There is a standard ASP+ configuration file shipped with the NGWS frameworks and runtime that contains default settings, and it is located in this directory. The default setting for the security configuration section of this file is to allow all users access. Since there is no configuration file in the example Application Root directory that modifies this behavior, all users have access to it, because that directory inherits from the machine-level configuration file. If the Config.web file in the SubDir1 directory contains a security configuration section that allows access only to certain users, then SubDir2 inherits that setting but the Application Root directory will not. So, all users have access to the Application Root directory, but only certain users have access to both of the subdirectories.