When is using XML based configuration files preferable to using source based interfaces and/or classes? I’ve been taking a look at command frameworks such as those that come with the various rich client toolkits out there, and also GUI Commands. It struck me that many things which I would allow via a concrete class or an abstract base class these frameworks try to push out into XML files. I can see that XML could be good for huge apps such as, for example, Eclipse, where the developers want to provide extensibility without a huge class loading overhead.

But most of these rich client kits are designed to be used to create small to medium sized applications and if this is what you are doing then I don’t see the point of scattering configuration information around the place, it’s better to keep it all together and the only place that this can happen is right there in the source code.

One final argument for keeping some of this external is for easy internationalisation, but this can be achieved simply using standard Java resource bundles or Eclipse style NLS libraries (I prefer the eclipse style NLS approach as it makes code more readable).