Programming Microsoft® ASP.NET 3.5

Chapter 15. ASP.NET State Management

All real-world applications of any shape and form need to maintain their own state to serve users' requests. ASP.NET applications are no exception. However, unlike other types of applications, they need special system-level tools to achieve the result. The reason for this peculiarity lies in the stateless nature of the underlying protocol that Web applications still rely upon. As long as HTTP remains the transportation protocol for the Web, all applications will run into the same trouble—figuring out the most effective way to persist state information.

Application state is a sort of blank container that each application and programmer can fill with whatever piece of information makes sense to persist: from user ...