Configuring External Settings Files

Related Articles:

• Settings hierarchy and overrides.
• Configure advanced or custom options for a connection or sync policy.

Riva settings files contain the following:

• advanced or custom options that are to be used by Riva nodes; and
• a reference to a .settings files on another Riva node.

Best practices:

1. Define the common options shared by many nodes in one .settings file, for example: SharedSettings.settings
2. On every node where these options are needed, ensure access to the file. This can either be through replication like DFSR or via a network share.
3. Do not place the .settings files in the executable application folder, for example, Riva\Application\Base\ or Riva\Application\2.4.43.37926.
4. The following locations support external @settings external references in order of least to greatest precedence: "Application Version-less Settings", "Application Versioned App.Settings", "Connection Settings", "Individual User Settings".

Result: At run time, all the nodes that contain the reference to the file SharedSettings.settings load the files as per the settings loading hierarchy.

Format of an External .Settings File

An external .settings file is an XML file that has the following format:

Each additional setting is added by an individual <add /> XML element.

The "key" and "value" attributes are used to store the key/value pairs for each option.

Formatting to reference another external .settings file

In some cases, it is desirable to have many external .settings files in a chain.

The key is set to "@settings".

The value is set to the absolute path of the referenced .settings file.

Absolute path examples:

• D:\Instances\Riva\Data\SharedSettings.settings
• \\server-primary\riva_share\settings\Common.settings
• \\IP-address\drive$\folder\Shared.settings
• \\host-name\drive$\folder\Project.settings
• \\full-qualified-domain-name\drive$\folder\Sync-A.settings

Merging, Hierarchy, and Overrides

If a .settings file contains advanced or custom options and a reference to another .settings file, the contents are merged.

See Settings hierarchy and overrides.