The OWIN Framework provides a simple standardization of middleware configuration so that:

1. Application developers can choose any method they like to provide configuration to the middleware in their application, and are not restricted to everything being in a web.config file. For example they can use the Urchin centralized rules-based configuration management system instead of web.config if they like.

2. Applications define the layout of their configuration data and can therefore include multiple instances of the same middleware with different configurations. This is in contrast to the Microsoft approach where each component defines where it's configuration data is located in the web.config file which makes it impossible to have two instances of the same component with different configurations.

3. Middleware developers do not need to know or care which configuration mechanism the application developer chose.

4. All configuration data is strongly typed using simple class definitions. Middleware developers define the shape of the configuration data and the default values. Application developers define the layout of their configuration data as a whole and selectively override the default values.

5. It is possible to write unit tests that test different configurations by mocking the configuration data provider.

Middleware that can be configured can implement the optional IConfigurable interface.

Application developers configure the middleware in their application by using the fluid .ConfigureWith() method when adding middleware to the pipeline builder. The ConfigureWith method is passed an object that implements the IConfiguration interface. The OWIN Framework provides implementations of this interface for getting configuration data from web.config and for Urchin. This is a very simple interface that you can easily implement yourself to get configuration data from your database or any other source.