The session failover feature enables you to save serialized JavaBeans on a session backup server. If the ATG server originally handling a session becomes unavailable, important elements of a user’s session can be recreated from these serialized beans. You can use the serialize feature descriptor attribute tag to customize how properties are handled when a repository item is serialized.
If you serialize a transient item, all of its properties are serialized along with it. If you set the feature descriptor attribute on a property like this:
<property ...>
<attribute name="serialize" value="false"/>
</property>
you can cause a particular property not to be serialized.
If you serialize a persistent item, only the transient properties (those not in a table tag) are serialized unless you explicitly set the feature descriptor attribute like this:
<property ...>
<attribute name="serialize" value="true"/>
</property>
If the item is persistent, its persistent properties will have been updated in the database already, and can be retrieved from the database if the session needs to be restored.
