Servlet/jsp & custom sessions

Question

          Our app is using custom sessions with most of the data stored in
          ejbeans. We can't really use http sessions
          as multiple 'http' sessions may end up using the same set of beans which
          make up our own 'application defined'
          session. As the set of beans making up one session are typically located
          on the same host, we'd like to make sure
          that all requests using them are processed on the respecting host.
          I understand now that performing some kind of 'servlet-chaining' in
          order to forward a request to the correct host
          is a bad idea. Our current solution is to wrap the processing of the
          request into a ejbean which is made available
          throughout the cluster by adding a reference into the jndi tree (using
          the beans allows us to ensure that sessions time
          out when necessary.) What i don't like about this approach is that there
          is no way to write a simple servlet or jsp
          pages as direct access to the servlet interface is lost (a copy of the
          servlet-related data could be sent to the bean
          on remote host, but that's expensive and ends up in something similar to
          servlet-chaining.)
          Does any know of possibilities to solve this problem a little bit more
          elegantly? Essentially i'd like to run servlet and
          jsp pages on top of our 'application defined' sessions, efficiently
          working in a cluster.
          Thanks a lot for any suggestions,
          roman
          

Answer 1

          thank's for your reply!
          the whole thing is not really related to ejb, i'm just using it as a
          workaround.
          it's actually a gross misuse of ejb...
          the main issue is that i'd like to be able to write jsp pages and store
          per-session
          information in a object other than the HttpSession. i cannot use the
          HttpSession
          because one session in our application does not necessarily correspond
          to one http
          session.
          so far the solution is trivial; i just keep keep a reference to the
          session data
          in the jndi tree. for each request, i can find the data with one jndi
          lookup. it
          even works on a cluster by using remote objects and a replicated jndi
          tree (thank
          you, weblogic!)
          but, for efficiency, i'd also like to process each request on the same
          host where
          the session data is stored... how can i do that without servlet
          chaining?
          roman
          Prasad Peddada wrote:
          >
          > It is not quite clear to me what you are trying to do here.
          >
          > What type of ejbs are you talking about?
          >
          > Roman Puttkammer wrote:
          >
          > > Our app is using custom sessions with most of the data stored in
          > > ejbeans. We can't really use http sessions
          > > as multiple 'http' sessions may end up using the same set of beans which
          > > make up our own 'application defined'
          > > session. As the set of beans making up one session are typically located
          > > on the same host, we'd like to make sure
          > > that all requests using them are processed on the respecting host.
          > >
          > > I understand now that performing some kind of 'servlet-chaining' in
          > > order to forward a request to the correct host
          > > is a bad idea. Our current solution is to wrap the processing of the
          > > request into a ejbean which is made available
          > > throughout the cluster by adding a reference into the jndi tree (using
          > > the beans allows us to ensure that sessions time
          > > out when necessary.) What i don't like about this approach is that there
          > > is no way to write a simple servlet or jsp
          > > pages as direct access to the servlet interface is lost (a copy of the
          > > servlet-related data could be sent to the bean
          > > on remote host, but that's expensive and ends up in something similar to
          > > servlet-chaining.)
          > >
          > > Does any know of possibilities to solve this problem a little bit more
          > > elegantly? Essentially i'd like to run servlet and
          > > jsp pages on top of our 'application defined' sessions, efficiently
          > > working in a cluster.
          > >
          > > Thanks a lot for any suggestions,
          > > roman