settingsonado-domain-knowledge

name

settingsonado-domain-knowledge

description

SettingsOnADO product knowledge for Servant Software LLC agents. Use when working on anything related to SettingsOnADO: - Product strategy, roadmap, or feature planning - Technical architecture discussions or documentation - Developer experience, onboarding, or API questions - Integration with consuming projects (MockDB, etc.) - Understanding current maturity, gaps, or productization needs Provides: product purpose, architecture overview, asset inventory, maturity assessment, and productization gaps. SELF-UPDATING: When your work changes, advances, or extends SettingsOnADO in ways that affect this knowledge (new features, assets, maturity changes, resolved gaps, etc.), you MUST update this skill and its reference files to reflect the new state before completing your task. This keeps the knowledge accurate for future agents. Update the specific section(s) affected -- do not rewrite unchanged content.

SettingsOnADO Domain Knowledge

Quick Reference

What is SettingsOnADO? An ADO.NET extension for centralizing application settings in a database store. Each settings class corresponds to a table with a single-row configuration. Supports transparent encryption, change notifications (pub/sub), caching, and JSON file-based storage.

Core Product Facts

• Primary Interface: ISettingsManager -- Get() / Update() for typed settings
• Storage Pattern: Single-row-per-table -- each settings class = one table with one row
• Schema Evolution: Automatic ADD/DROP columns when settings classes change
• Encryption: Pluggable via IEncryptionProvider (AES and DataProtection built-in)
• Change Notifications: Pub/sub with typed SettingsChangeEventArgs
• Caching: Decorator pattern (SettingsManagerWithCache)
• JSON Specialization: File-based settings via JSON ADO.NET provider
• Tech Stack: .NET 8 + netstandard2.0, Microsoft.Data.Sqlite (tests), FileBased.DataProviders (JSON)
• License: MIT
• Distribution: NuGet (ServantSoftware.SettingsOnADO, ServantSoftware.SettingsOnADO.Json)

Key Assets

Asset	Status
Core SettingsManager	Production (Get/Update, schema evolution, encryption, pub/sub)
SettingsManagerWithCache	Production (decorator with in-memory caching)
AesEncryptionProvider	Production (256-bit AES, Base64 storage)
DataProtectionEncryptionProvider	Production (ASP.NET Core DPAPI integration)
[Encrypted] Attribute	Production (transparent string/enum encryption)
Pub/Sub Notifications	Production (thread-safe, typed change events)
JSON Settings Manager	Production (file-based, one JSON per settings class)
[JsonDescription] Attribute	Production (JSON comment injection)
Schema Evolution	Production (automatic column add/drop on class changes)
NuGet Distribution	2 packages published

Ecosystem Role

SettingsOnADO is a supporting OSS library in Servant Software LLC's product stack:

• MockDB -- Uses SettingsOnADO for application configuration persistence
• FileBased.DataProviders -- Provides the JSON ADO.NET provider used by SettingsOnADO.Json

Maturity Assessment

Dimension	Score	Notes
Problem/Solution Fit	4/5	Clean abstraction for settings-as-data with schema evolution
Core Engineering	4/5	Well-separated concerns (Manager/Repository/Schema), decorator/strategy patterns
Feature Completeness	4/5	CRUD, encryption, pub/sub, caching, JSON specialization
Quality & Reliability	3/5	Unit + integration tests with SQLite and JSON, pub/sub tests
Documentation	3/5	README with usage examples, encryption guide; no API reference
Commercial Readiness	3/5	MIT licensed, NuGet published, CI/CD pipeline

Top Gaps

P0 (Critical)

Gap	Impact
No thread safety guarantees	Consumers must implement their own synchronization

P1 (Important)

Gap	Impact
No API reference documentation	Developer onboarding friction
No migration/versioning strategy beyond add/drop columns	Complex schema changes may lose data
SettingsManagerWithCache is not concurrent-safe	Single-consumer limitation

Detailed References

See references/ for:

• Architecture Overview
• Asset Inventory
• Maturity Assessment
• Gaps & Next Steps