Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 Application Development Guide

Session Managers

A session manager automatically creates new session objects whenever a new session starts. In some circumstances, clients do not join the session, for example, if the session manager uses cookies and the client does not accept cookies.

GlassFish Server offers these session management options, determined by the session-manager element’s persistence-type attribute in the sun-web.xml file:


Note –

If the session manager configuration contains an error, the error is written to the server log and the default (memory) configuration is used.


For more information, see session-manager in Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 Application Deployment Guide.

The memory Persistence Type

This persistence type is not designed for a production environment that requires session persistence. It provides no session persistence. However, you can configure it so that the session state in memory is written to the file system prior to server shutdown.

To specify the memory persistence type for a specific web application, edit the sun-web.xml file as in the following example. The persistence-type attribute is optional, but must be set to memory if included. This overrides the web container availability settings for the web application.

<sun-web-app>
...
<session-config>
	<session-manager persistence-type="memory" />
		<manager-properties>
			<property name="sessionFilename" value="sessionstate" />
		</manager-properties>
	</session-manager>
	...
</session-config>
...
</sun-web-app>

The only manager property that the memory persistence type supports is sessionFilename, which is listed under manager-properties in Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 Application Deployment Guide. The sessionFilename property specifies the name of the file where sessions are serialized and persisted if the web application or the server is stopped. To disable this behavior, specify an empty string as the value of sessionFilename.

For more information about the sun-web.xml file, see Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 Application Deployment Guide.

The file Persistence Type

This persistence type provides session persistence to the local file system, and allows a single server domain to recover the session state after a failure and restart. The session state is persisted in the background, and the rate at which this occurs is configurable. The store also provides passivation and activation of the session state to help control the amount of memory used. This option is not supported in a production environment. However, it is useful for a development system with a single server instance.


Note –

Make sure the delete option is set in the server.policy file, or expired file-based sessions might not be deleted properly. For more information about server.policy, see The server.policy File.


To specify the file persistence type for a specific web application, edit the sun-web.xml file as in the following example. Note that persistence-type must be set to file. This overrides the web container availability settings for the web application.

<sun-web-app>
...
<session-config>
	<session-manager persistence-type="file">
		<store-properties>
			<property name="directory" value="sessiondir" />
		</store-properties>
	</session-manager>
	...
</session-config>
...
</sun-web-app>

The file persistence type supports all the manager properties listed under manager-properties in Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 Application Deployment Guide except sessionFilename, and supports the directory store property listed under store-properties in Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 Application Deployment Guide.

For more information about the sun-web.xml file, see Oracle GlassFish Server 3.0.1 Application Deployment Guide.