Alternative To Sessions? (asp.net mvc c#)

Question

I'm being told that the server we're being given to use has 2gb of ram but is nearly maxed out with the current main application that runs on it. But for the site were building, which is wholly reliant on a web service, we need to pass the response to the previous request within a chain... i.e.

Page One

var stepone = project.webservice.stepone("companyname","companyid"); //List Array Returned

Page Two

var steptwo = project.webservice.steptwo(stepone, otherargs);

As 'they' don't want us to store 'a lot' in the session, and were using ASP.net MVC C#, what other ways are there that would keep our memory footprint low but allow us to store what we need to for the users progression.

Answer 1

Use TempData but implement the interface ITempDataProvider in your own provider that uses database or some such in lieu of sessions.

HTH,

Dan

Answer 2

You can take a look at Velocity distibuted highly scalable in-memory cache from Microsoft. Check out this blog post from Stephen Walther.

Answer 3

You might even have to drop MVC (maybe?) and go back to using basic webforms POST data and disable all eventstates. You can manage all the data you need via form variables and inputs on a page, as long as one page POSTs to the other, which would eliminate session.

A pain and costly to do, but you can do it. Just quote them the cost in man hours it would take to develop such a solution, and then contrast that with the cost of a decent server.

Answer 4

Depending on the data, you could store it in cookies.

Answer 5

If you have a database server, then create temp tables to store your data as needed.