Reducing complexity and improving maintainability of software directly contributes to increasing its quality. The challenge for developers is that software applications tend to be laden with business logic rules that govern the behavior of the application. By abstracting behaviors out of the code and into application metadata, the application design becomes inherently more robust, flexible, and adaptable. As a result, application and test code can be much more simplified and much easier to maintain or adapt via the application metadata.

Application designs that are more flexible tend to decouple specific details from the logic and algorithms by storing static detail in metadata. In managed code applications, using XML structures to store metadata within application-specific configuration files is encouraged as a means to drive application behavior at run time. It is this design practice that ultimately provides lower-cost application maintenance and flexibility, especially in post-release, live production circumstances.