The present invention provides for a system and method facilitating configuration management. The system includes a configuration store that stores persisted configuration and/or dependency information associated with application(s), and, a configuration service component that manages access to the configuration store. The system can further include a configuration management engine (e.g., API) that allows client application(s) to access, query and/or modify setting(s). In accordance with an aspect of the present invention, application(s) submit an XML assembly manifest which comprises: the assembly identity, the application binaries, its dependencies etc. The manifest can also include a configuration section that declaratively specifies the persisted settings for the application. The configuration section includes an XSD-based schema that defines rich types for the settings and the settings themselves, and metadata for these settings including description and default values, manageability attributes (e.g., migrate, backup, policy), and integrity constraints called assertions (that could potentially describe the relationships between settings).