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Managing State in ASP.NET Web Applications

The Internet is a stateless application. In a nutshell, that means every call to the server is separate from the next or the previous call. Unlike Windows Forms applications in which you can set global variables and have a bunch of hidden forms open to maintain the state of the data, the Web doesn't afford you that luxury. So, the challenge is to keep track of where the user is in your Web application, and where to take her next. This is done by maintaining state.

State can be maintained in several ways, and some ways are better than others. Where you maintain state can be broken down into two categories: on the client and on the server.

Managing State on the Client

When I say managing state on the client ...