Pattern - Web Page configuration GUIs

Web applications can provide much of the user interface for configuring the application through their own web pages -authenticated users can view and manipulate the state of the application, and possibly even restart the application itself.

Features

• One or more web forms to configure the application
• Usually: password protection on the configuration pages
• The configuration is usually stored in the application's database.

Advantages

• Enables remote administration of the web application.
• Can provide a helpful user interface, with links to documentation.
• Live system configuration: changes may be immediate.

Disadvantages

• Bootstrapping problem: how do you set up the initial database binding and administrator login details?
• The application's own database is not a CMDB with auditing and rollback, or atomic updates.
• Hard to copy configuration state from one machine to another. You cannot easily email the configuration.
• Does not extend to the complete configuration of the application. For example, to get the database driver to load, a manual copy of the relevant JAR file into the application server's lib/ directory will usually be needed.

This design is essentially a variant of the Graphical Installers Pattern; the installation GUI is now merged with the application itself. This gives you more management control of the deployed application, and the ability to remotely configure the product.

SmartFrog support

We don't directly support this, but the not-yet-complete restlet components would enable forms to be posted to a live web site. Navigating configuration GUIs may be more complex than this, as session state (cookies) will also need to be maintained