Whenever a user accesses a site that uses the Personalization module, two different mechanisms are used to track the user’s actions:
A session is created for the user, and is maintained either through a cookie or through URL rewriting.
The user is associated with a profile.
The Session Tracking chapter of the Platform Programming Guide discusses session creation and tracking. This section describes methods for tracking users by associating them with profiles. It discusses the following:
methods for tracking guest users
methods for tracking permanent users
how to use cookies to maintain information about users
