Session Data Lost Between JSP's

Question

Hello,
I am using Oracle 10g Application Server (9.0.4) on SunOS 5.8. I am trying to upgrade an application previously written for Oracle 9iAS 9.0.2.
A single JSP (myFile.jsp) is called via a POST operation, and it is initally used to create a frameset that contains two frames. Each frame has a URL link to the same JSP file, with some additional parameters:
<frameset border="0" rows="*,70">
<frame NAME="topFrame" SRC="myFile.jsp?PARAMETER1=hello&amp;PARAMETER2=goodbye"/>
<frame NAME="bottomFrame" SRC="myFile.jsp?PARAMETER1=hello&amp;PARAMETER2=goodbye"/>
</frameset>
The problem is that when myFile.jsp is called to generate the actual page for the frames, all the HttpServletRequest data has gone, and only the parameters passed in the Query String remain. I don't want to lose the original POST data - in fact, when I used this on Oracle 9iAS 9.0.2 it preserved the POST data and added the additional queries from the query string so all the parameters were available.
Has the behaviour of the session manager changed that much between Oracle 9iAS and Oracle 10g 9.0.4? How can I achieve my goal on 9.0.4?
I tried adding the original POST request to the HttpSession variable as follows:
session.setAttribute("PARENT_REQUEST",request);
and then extracting the request data when the JSP is called on subsequent occasions as follows:
HttpServletRequest newRequest = (HttpServletRequest) session.getAttribute("PARENT_REQUEST");
But 'newRequest' is actually empty, and it doesn't create an exception. If I debug the session object I notice 2 things:
1. The session ID remains the same througout all calls of myFile.jsp.
2. The memory location pointed to by the parameter "PARENT_REQUEST" also remains the same, in the format:
com.evermind.server.http.AJPHttpServletRequest@1bd5093
If the session object being passed around by cookies remains consistent, why can I not extract the PARENT_REQUEST attribute from it on subsequent calls to myFile.jsp? Have I misunderstood how HttpSession works? How can I modify my JSP's so that data stored during a session is made available to subsequent calls to myFile.jsp?
I appreciate any insight you can offer!

Answer 1

Has the behaviour of the session manager changed that much between Oracle 9iAS and
Oracle 10g 9.0.4? How can I achieve my goal on 9.0.4?If your experience did suggest something has changed from 9.0.2 to 9.0.4, I would believe that it is more about request management.
If the session object being passed around by cookies remains consistent, why can I not
extract the PARENT_REQUEST attribute from it on subsequent calls to myFile.jsp? Have
I misunderstood how HttpSession works? How can I modify my JSP's so that data stored
during a session is made available to subsequent calls to myFile.jsp?The "request" in the following code
session.setAttribute("PARENT_REQUEST", request);
is just a pointer to the actual request object. Other code, especially the server internal code that manage the http requests and responses can see and manipulate that actual request object. For example, although I am not sure if it is the case, the request objects can be pooled and reused. So it is possible that although "The memory location pointed to by the parameter "PARENT_REQUEST" also remains the same, in the format: com.evermind.server.http.AJPHttpServletRequest@1bd5093", the actual request object at that memory location may have changed. The right way to preserve the original request object is to make a private deep copy of it; however there is no easy way to do that.
Well, an easy way out is to store directly what you need from the original request. If you would like to store the parameters, try
session.setAttribute("origParams", request.getParameterMap().clone());
Although this clone() does a shallow copy, it is probably good enough. To be absolutely sure, you can make a deep copy of everything you need and store them.
Good luck!