code: private static ConfigSettings readConfiguration(final String path)
  		throws IOException, SAXException, ParserConfigurationException
  	{
  
  		ConfigurationReader reader = new ConfigurationReader(path);
  		return reader.read();
  	}
docs: Reads and parses the configuration file.
  
  @param path
  path to the configuration file
  @return ConfigurationSettings
  
  @throws IOException
  if an error occurred while reading the configuration file
  @throws SAXException
  if an error occurred while using the xml parser
  @throws ParserConfigurationException
  if the initialization of the xml parser failed