Spring supports configuration management via properties substitutiion in its XML bean context. The following is the XML example:
System properties should look something like this:
Above uses the system properties to override the bean settings. In Equinox, all system property are kept in the config.ini. To enable the Spring PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer, you need to import package org.springframework.beans.factory.config. This placeholder allows default settings (in case it cannot resolve from the system properties). To enable this, import package org.springframework.core.io.support.
References:
Configuration management with Spring: http://blog.arendsen.net/index.php/2005/03/12/configuration-management-with-spring/
Spring PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer with default value: http://thiamteck.blogspot.com/2008/04/spring-propertyplaceholderconfigurer.html