Another important capability of ASP is maintaining information specific to individual users. In the previous step, you entered your name in a form, and Sun ONE Active Server Pages stored it in what's called a Session variable. This page uses the Session variable to display your name above.

The HTTP protocol is inherently stateless, which means that no information about the user who is browsing the Web site is maintained from one Web page to another. For many applications, however, knowing the state of a user's interaction with an application is essential. Sun ONE Active Server Pages overcomes this obstacle by creating a Session object that holds all of a particular user's information.

Sessions are established when a client connects to the Sun ONE Active Server Pages application, and end when explicitly abandoned or after a time-out period configurable in the application has expired. The Session object can hold just about any type of information that the programmer deems necessary, such as personal user information.

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