It is possible nowadays to do a lot by use of a simple code on the blog. Better still, plugins come handy. However, those who are well versed with coding will find it easy to setup and enable lots of features on their blog. By use of a simple code, you can enable ASP.NET SQL Server Session on a Web Application with ease and fast. In this post, you will learn what ASP.NET Server Session is and how to enable it with ease. It is a simple task that should not tease newbies in the tech world.
What is ASP.NET SQL Server Session?
The period that a user takes to interact with an Application in the web is referred to as a session. Session state is the feature, which is intrinsic, and is used by ASP developers who want to keep data for special user sessions for different purposes. Session state is simply a memory which comes in form of a dictionary or may be a hash table for instance key-value pairs which will be enabled and later read to determine the duration of the user’s session.
Why SQL?
When running many web servers, for a single site, the session state for the default asp.net, InProc becomes useless as the site owner cannot be sure that every page request is directed to the same server. Therefore, it becomes inevitable to acquire a central state store that will be accessed by each web server.
SQL Server gives a centralized session state storage inside a Web farm. SQL also offers transactional capabilities that give reliability to a number of database systems that are related. Thus, SQL Server can be used to save a session.
However, the process above is not as efficient as StateServer and InProc mode. This is because information has to be stored in a different server and in a different process. Still, the process comes handy as compared to using aspnet_state service. This will depend on the database configurations and the workload. The session state that has been saved on SQL database persist even through web server reboots and restarts. You should store the session state for reliability purposes. This is done on SQL cluster for a web farm
Enable ASP.NET SQL Server Session on a Web Application
There are three distinct modes that can be used to store the information for each session. These are StateServer, SQLServer and InProc. There are both benefits and disadvantages for using each of the methods above. InProc offers the fastest performance for the simple reason that the session storage is located in the IIS Worker Process. The disadvantage is that the session may be lost in the event that the Worker Process is recycled.
SQL Server is slower than InProc, estimated to be 15-20% slower, but keeps the session data intact even after recycling the Worker Process. The statement management mode that you choose will depend on the appropriateness for the web application. For instance, you may not want to lose any session data and to this end you go for the SQL Server in place of the InProc.
To Enable ASP.NET SQL Server Session on a Web Application, it is recommended that you add another MS SQL database which can be done in Control Panel. The database will be used for storage of sessions only. This avoids possible confusions in the databases.
Request for database installation from the site host and include the database name and the ASP.NET version you are using. Once your Session State database has been created by the host, update the web.config files as shown below.
