NOTES.INI should probably be promoted to being an NSF.  Doesn't have to be a complicated one, could be really simple:  each document has one, maybe two or three fields.  The main field would be plain text, another field would be an effective date field, another could be expiration field, and maybe a checkbox for whether the line is active or not.  Basically, one view, and that view represents the variables the server will obey.

 

This would make admin easier:  you could provide admins access to INI-like variables without having to give them shell or filesystem-level access to the physical machine.  This would also open up the option of keeping configuration on multiple servers identical through simple replication.  It'd also open up the possibility of having agents run to modify the server's behavior based on other triggers or conditions. Debugging params could also be turned on and off easier.