BC4J ApplicationModule - best practice in Stateful web application?

Question

When writing a stateful web application that uses BC4J framework as the model, what is considered best practice in using the Application Module. Is it okay to store an AM instance in a HttpSession, or should we opt for the features explained in the BC4J Pooling samples, which uses the SessionCookie interface?
Tips/Tricks/Pitfalls information welcome
Thx,

Answer 1

When writing a stateful web application that uses BC4J framework as the model, what is considered best practice in
using the Application Module. Is it okay to store an AM instance in a HttpSession, or should we opt for the features
explained in the BC4J Pooling samples, which uses the SessionCookie interface? Best practice is to store the SessionCookie (an ApplicationModule handle) as demonstrated in the pooling sample.
This will allow many advantages including scalable state management support, timeout support, and
failover / clustering support.
Caching the ApplicationModule directly can be dangerous because:
1. The AM is not serializable which could result in serialization exceptions if the servlet container were distributable.
2. The AM does not responsd to timeout which could result in memory leaks if the AM is not explicitly returned to the
pool at the end of each request.
3. For stateful applications the memory consumed by each AM could be significant. Even if the AM were correctly
released to the pool upon session timeout it would still have consumed that memory up to that point. Using the
SessionCookie along with state managed release allows for scalable state management.
Tips/Tricks/Pitfalls information welcome
Thx,