Construction of the Profile Configuration Data

The profile configuration data holds the configuration profile for a user application that runs on a specific host.

The organizational units of an organization, along with the users, are stored in the configuration repository hierarchically. The same applies to the domain components.

Configuration profiles are assigned to elements in the hierarchies. Configuration profiles that are assigned to an element are inherited by the children of that element.

The configuration data of an application depends on the user who runs the application and the host where the application runs.

The configuration settings that affect a user depend on the configuration profiles that are assigned to the elements in the path from the user element to the root of the tree. These profiles must be merged together to build the set of configuration settings for the user.

Since it is possible to define profiles based on the host where the application of the user is running, the profiles assigned to the host, or to any of the elements that are in the path from the host to the root of the tree should also be merged together with the configuration profiles that affects the user.

Figure 1–2 Configuration Process

The following rules are used to construct the profile configuration:

• Order of processing: The order in which profiles are merged is important. The Host Local set of configuration profiles are processed first, followed by the Host Global set, the User Local set, and then the User Global set.

  If there is more than one configuration profile in a set, the priority number that is associated with a profile determines the precessing order for the profile, that is, the lowest number is processed first.

• Properties and Values: A property is an element in the configuration that can be defined, for example, "background color". A value is the value that you assign to a property, for example, the value for the property "background color" is "white".

  If a new property is introduced by one profile, the property and its value are added to the merged configuration tree.

  If a property has a value that is marked as enforced, the new value is stored in the merged tree. New values for the property that occur in other profiles are ignored.

  If a property already has a value when a new value is defined in a profile that is being processed, the new value is assigned to the property.