Stateful sessions on WebLogic and WebSphere application servers

The HTTP user interface (or the Application Console) sessions are “stateful." When transactions complete, they leave information (state) on the J2EE application server for the subsequent transaction.

By being stateful, all HTTP transactions return to the same application server instance. This can be accomplished by telling the load-balancers or proxies that the sessions are sticky.

By default, WebLogic and WebSphere® application servers are configured for memory session persistence where the HTTP session-state is only stored in the application server instance that the transaction ran on. The session information is lost if that application server instance fails. If that happens, the user is redirected to the login page. After logging back into the application, the user is able to continue where they left off.