Serialization vs Embedded Database for simple standalone application

Question

Say, I have a pretty simple Java application that needs the way to store some user settings. XML is not a really good solution, since I want to store them in binary form. So, wh

Answer 1

User settings are typically stored as

• properties, using the properties file format
• properties using the XML format
• preferences, using the Preferences API. This has the advantage of storing and reading user and system preferences for you, without having to think about where to store them, etc. See http://download.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/guide/lang/preferences.html

Answer 2

As Apache Derby is an embeddable relational database, it makes sense to use it for storing and manipulating relational data. Using an embedded db for persisting a few user settings only is a bit overkill.

If it were me, I would use a simple key/value pair serialization for persisting user settings.