I wrote a nice and useful wrapper class for .NET ConfigurationManager class. What this class gives you: Internal cache for reading AppSettings values. The cache refresh itself when the file is change on the fly. (Just use Setting .Watch() ) You can read parameters from AppSettings section with generic support and also forward default value. You can read connection string and more... Basically you can start working with the wrapper class instead of using .NET ConfigurationManager class. Of course...