Commons Configuration provides a generic configuration interface which enables
an application to read configuration data from a variety of sources. Commons
Configuration provides typed access to single, and multi-valued configuration
parameters.

Configuration parameters may be loaded from the following sources:

  * Properties files
  * XML documents
  * Windows INI files
  * Property list files (plist)
  * JNDI
  * JDBC Datasource
  * System properties
  * Applet parameters
  * Servlet parameters

Different configuration sources can be mixed using a ConfigurationFactory and
CompositeConfiguration. Additional sources of configuration parameters can be
created by using custom configuration objects. This customization can be
achieved by extending AbstractConfiguration.

WWW: http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-configuration/