ASP.NET 2.0 Unleashed

Chapter 22. Maintaining Application State

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Using Browser Cookies

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Using Session State

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Using Profiles

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Summary

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Developers who are new to programming for the web always have difficulty understanding the problem of maintaining state. The HTTP protocol, the fundamental protocol of the World Wide Web, is a stateless protocol. What this means is that from a web server’s perspective, every request is from a new user. The HTTP protocol does not provide you with any method of determining whether any two requests are made by the same person.

However, maintaining state is important in just about any web application. The ...