--------------------------------------------------------------- - Preferences design considerations. --------------------------------------------------------------- java.util.prefs.Preferences implementation. The preferences implementation has been designed to be able to persist the following preferences structure: ----- etc. ----- ----- etc. ----- The idea is to be able to persist group or user principals properties where properties are logically grouped into property sets. Therefore, we could have preferences nodes of type user such as: 1. /user/userprincipal1/propertyset1 where propertyset1 contains properties according to a property set definition. 2. /group/groupprincipal1/propertyset2 where propertyset1 contains properties according to a property set definition. Good preferences article: http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/synd/2001/10/17/j2se.html