Our department has finally decided on an approach of keeping all data completely separate from the applications.

This will enforce the discipline on us required for any possible upsizing that may be required later.

This is fine...except if I cannot store any data of any kind with the application how do I tell my application where the database container for the application is located.

At the bare minimum I must store at least one path.

Or I must hardcode at least one path into my application. This of course goes against the grain of what I have practised for years.

I can think of a few options none of them very tidy.

How do other people deal with this situation?