Loading Jquery with data from .properties file

Question

I am working on a dashboard which displays loads of graphs, tables and other data which it receives from numerous sources. The graphs, tables etc are essentially all widgets. I need make the dashboard customize-able. so that each user after signing in can customize the look and feel of the dashboard. Its kind of like iGoogle -with my own widgets.

Questions:

What is the best approach to store and retrieve user specific properties like

• Order of Widgets.
• Animation sequences.
• Refresh Rate
• And so on.

Should I use a properties file for each user, and read the configurations from it or use database [table] instead? There are quite a few configuration parameter so in case of the database approach, the number of columns in configuration table might be quite large [say 40 to 50].

Is it a bad practice [in terms of efficiency and security] to store data in properties file and access it using AJAX?

Please be kind to suggest.

Answer 1

For a handful of users property files would work fine.

I would go with a database. 50 columns really isn't that many, although once you start it is probably very easy to normalize it down to several smaller tables.

You don't say how critical the configurations are, it might be the case that you could just store it away in a cookie or some sort of local database like HTML5 allows.