[yndoendo]

I would say it is more than than.

Configuration files are the greater than a central repository like Windows Registry. They allow temporary changing and ease of sharing how an application operates. They also create a well defend meaning of the settings.

This is why I do not like how Windows has been implemented, they treat files like a 3rd class citizen versus a 1st class.

[hshdhdhj4444]

This seems a pretty fundamental idea within Microsoft.

The original, much more ambitious version of Vista, Longhorn, was shifting more responsibility for metadata from files to a DB.