IIS and Session Variables

[Eric]

What are the dangers of using session variables in IIS 6.0. My application
is servicing about 500 users each of which are authenticated separately and
have individual characteristics that are stored in cache and session
variables.

My concern is that memory could become an issue if concurrent user activity
is high. Is this a legitimate concern? Are their settings on the host server
that should be increased in order to prevent a memory issue?

 

[Anthony Jones]

What are the dangers of using session variables in IIS 6.0. My application
is servicing about 500 users each of which are authenticated separately and
have individual characteristics that are stored in cache and session
variables.

My concern is that memory could become an issue if concurrent user activity
is high. Is this a legitimate concern? Are their settings on the host server
that should be increased in order to prevent a memory issue?

The fact that you use the terms 'cache' and 'session' together suggest that
your question is related to ASP.NET whereas this NG is for Classic ASP. Use
m.p.dotnet.framework.aspnet

That said, its difficult to give a definitive answer without some suggestion
as to how much memory a single use will require. Cache won't be a problem
it'll start dropping stuff if demand gets high. Session might be problem
but really does depend on how much each session costs.

 

[Old Pedant]

What are the dangers of using session variables in IIS 6.0. My application
is servicing about 500 users each of which are authenticated separately and
have individual characteristics that are stored in cache and session
variables.

Do the math.

Suppose all 500 users happened to be online simultaneously.

Suppose your web server has 2GB of memory (even my laptop has that much).

Suppose you are willing to dedicate 5 megabytes (a drop in the bucket) of
memory to session variable usage.

So 5MB/500 is 10KB per user.

Meaning that is you don't store more than 10KB of information, per user, in
session variables, you are way way home free.

Willing to dedicate 50MB to the cause? Now you can have 100KB per user.

But I'm here to tell you now that if you have 100KB per user, you are doing
something wrong, anyway. At that point, you should be using a database as
your "cache" instead of session variables. 2KB or 3KB? Sure.
*Occasionally* 10KB? Maybe. But 100KB? You have a bad design.