NonStop SOAP User's Manual

NonStop SOAP Features and Functions
NonStop SOAP User’s Manual—520501-012
4-3
Session Management
This DTD specifies the NonStop SOAP Header element used to specify an output
encoding for SOAP messages. The use of this element is described in Exposing a
Subset of DDL as a Web Service on page 4-18.
<!ELEMENT Encoding EMPTY>
<!ATTLIST Encoding
OutputEncoding CDATA #Required
>
Session Management
A session is a logical grouping of a series of requests. Sessions in NonStop SOAP
provide these advantages:
•
If you use context-sensitive services, you must establish a session to conduct
dialogs.
•
A session can span calls to multiple server classes--all context free, all context-
sensitive, or a mix.
•
Sessions are required for transaction control. A transaction can occur only within a
session.
•
If all services invoked within a session are context free, different SOAP server
processes can handle requests pertaining to the same session. (If any service
invoked within a session is context sensitive, the SOAP server class must consist
of only one process.)
Session Contexts
A session context is the information a SOAP server maintains to represent a session.
The session context is stored in the server-side cookie file described in Server-Side
Cookie File on page 4-10.
Multiple services can share a session context. For example, a SOAP server might
receive a request from a client, start a new session, run service A, return a response,
receive another request, run service B, end the session, and return a response.
Multiple SOAP servers can share the work of a session if they use the same cookie
file, as described in Server-Side Cookie File on page 4-10. However, if a subsession is
in progress—see Subsessions on page 4-4—a single SOAP server process owns the
session for the duration of the subsession.
Session ID
Each session context has a unique session ID, which is a handle used by the client
and SOAP server to relate requests and responses to a session context.