Optimizing HTTP Sessions

You can use the following guidelines for optimizing HTTP session usage within your application. Here are a few points to consider:

• Use in-memory replication techniques for session replication if possible. This approach is 10 times faster than the JDBC-based session persistence.

• When you're using session replication in a WebLogic cluster, minimize the session.setAttribute() operations. Each update to the session with a setAttribute operation will cause the following updates to occur:

  • An update being made to the session state on the secondary server via a remote call, in case of in-memory replication.

  • An update being made to the session state maintained in the database with a database write, in case of JDBC-based session persistence.

  • An update being made to the session state maintained in the file with an I/O write, in case of file-based session persistence.

• To minimize the session put operations, increase the granularity of the session update; for example, aggregate different put operations into one single put operation, if possible. Update the session with larger aggregate objects rather than multiple smaller objects.

• Factor for the session size and the average number of active sessions while tuning the WebLogic Server heap.

• Use sessions only when state cannot be maintained on the client side ”for example, in cookies.