Yeah, I use preferences all the time.  They're terrific for this sort of
data.

I've just started using derby.  Before that I often used hsqldb.  They are
both great tools.  The problem is that from the client end these still
look like full fledged SQL databases.  With hibernate you can hide some of
that, and make your code more portable.  

Ideally, I'd like a solution that hides most of the database stuff and
allows nearly complete portability.  The end user should be able to select
which database back end they want to use with my product and everything
should still work.  This just isn't possible with hand crafted SQL.  

It really sucks that we have a standard language for handling database
queries and construction, but that it doesn't do us any good in writing
portable code.  If every C compiler was different to the degree that SQL
implementations are, we would still be using FORTRAN.