We have a web application (Metro web services on tomcat) and need to handle properties to access remote systems.
Of course the properties are different in test and production environment.
We could deploy a properties file with the WAR file, but this would require manual steps after the deployment of the application. (editing after the deployment)
In other projects we had property files located in directories 'above' the deployed web application, to avoid that the property files are changed - but I'm not sure if this is a good design.
Which is the 'cleanest' way of handling server specific properties with tomcat web applications?
Define the settings in Tomcat's server.xml, then access them in your application with JNDI. See: http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-6.0-doc/jndi-resources-howto.html