While developing applications if there are any values in application which requires changes in future, should not be hard coded i.e. should not be maintained as static values within the application, because if any changes are required to those values in future client will not be able to make those changes because they will not have the source code for modification. To overcome this problem we need to identify those values and put them under a special file known as configuration file, its an XML file which stores values in it in the form of key/value pairs. The values that are present under configuration files can be read from applications in runtime. When an application is installed on a client machines along with it its configuration file will also be installed there and because the configuration file is a text file clients can edit those files and make modifications to the values under them at any time and those values will be taken into the application for execution.
