THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!

Rob, session variables are pretty much as you said...they are global variables available to every page in that browser session...when the session is finished, the variables go away. I find session variables easy to use in ASP.NET. To define a variable, it's

Session.Add("VariableName", "Value")

To refer to it on another page, it's:

Session.Item("VariableName")

Since they are not strongly typed, and are in fact stored as objects, you may have to convert them to a variable type before using them.

Terry--THANKS!! Just the info I was looking for.

Is there a central file that you declare them in--or if you reference them in one page---(other than default.aspx) all others will see them?

Is there a link to a fairly easy-to-follow explanation of these?

It's funny--I hate to get on my soapbox...but I graduated with a BA of IT..and felt that I was cheated. I learned a little bit about a lot and the extent of my programming was command-line stuff to learn C++--NOTHING real-world. I have bought three Wrox books and a Dreamweaver book--and I'm teaching myself. I remember I was project managing a development team to design a web app for Cerner---but I didn't get in the trenches..and remembered them talking about having to give up on having functionality to "back" up several pages--because it would degrade performance with having to transfer all these "session" variables. I assume that this "session" is something that is stored somewhere..that contains all these variables..for a certain period of time?? Is the "session", I assume, transferred with each time you go to a web page?

Terry--Thank you so much for your help!!!

Kind Regards,
Rob

I usually just assign session variables as I need them...I don't really know if that's best practice or not. They aren't stored anywhere but in the web server's memory...you could write them to a database for long-term storage if you want. For session variables that always have an initial value that you want all users to initialize with, you can create them in the global.asax file. There are some great beginner videos at http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/ex...ult.aspx#video. They are for Visual Web Developer, but they mostly apply to VS as well. There is one on state management that will get you started pretty well.

My understanding is that ASP.NET 2.0 handles them more efficiently than previous versions, but I suppose that if you have enough of them and lots of visitors to the site, you could run into memory problems. Still, I believe it's what most people use. Using profiles is an alternative to session variables in some cases, because it writes the values to a database, are strongly typed, and handles all the database stuff automatically. There are varying opinions on when you should use profiles and when you should use session variables, but I think the consensus is to use profiles for user-specific info, such as name, address, etc. that you want to keep, and use session variables for temporary storage of data that you want available for each page. The fact is, either can be used for either. The web server only keeps session variables in memory for as long as the session lasts. So if you are on a site and you close the browser, or even leave the page sitting until the timeout has expired (default is 30 min. I think), the web server releases those variables automatically.

Hang in there...I'm still new at this stuff too...I'm working on a project for a client that presents in some ways to me a "trial by fire", but I learn best that way anyway.

Terry

Thank you very much Terry!