Session management custom properties

You can specify additional settings for session management through setting custom properties.

To specify custom properties for session management, use the following steps:

  1. In the administrative console click Servers > Application Servers > server_name > Web Container Settings > Web container .
  2. Under Additional Properties select Custom Properties.
  3. On the Custom Properties page, click New.
  4. On the settings page, enter the property that you want to configure in the Name field and the value that you want to set it to in the Value field.
  5. Click Apply or OK.
  6. Click Save on the console task bar to save your configuration changes.
  7. Restart the server.
AlwaysEncodeURL [Fix Pack 35 or later]
Use this property to indicate whether URLs are encoded when cookies are available. The Servlet 2.5 specification specifies to not encode the URL on a response.encodeURL call if it is not necessary. By default, URLs are always encoded, even if the browser supports cookies. If you do not want URLs encoded when cookies are available, set this property to false.
CloneSeparatorChange
Use this property to maintain session affinity. The clone ID of the server is appended to session identifier separated by colon. On some Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) devices, a colon is not allowed. Set this property to "true" to change clone separator to a plus sign (+).
HideSessionValues
Use this property to prevent the logging of session attribute values in session manager traces. Applications store these session attribute values. However, you might not want to see these values in application server traces. The default value is false.
HttpSessionCloneId
Use this property to change the clone ID of the cluster member. Within a cluster, this name must be unique to maintain session affinity. When set, this name overwrites the default name generated by WebSphere Application Server.

[AIX HP-UX Linux Solaris Windows] Default clone ID length: 8 or 9

[iSeries] [z/OS] Default clone ID length: 40

Best practice [Fix Pack 31 or later] Best practice: You can set this property as a session management custom property, which is the preferred level at which to specify this property.bprac
HttpSessionIdLength
Use this property to configure the session identifier length. Do not use an extremely low value; using a low value results in reduced number of combinations possible, thereby increasing risk of guessing the session identifier. In a cluster, all cluster members should be configured with same ID length. Allowed range: 8 to 128. Default length: 23.
HttpSessionReaperPollInterval
Use this property to set a wake-up interval for the process that removes invalid sessions. Setting this property overrides the default installation value, which is between 30 and 360 seconds. If the maximum inactive interval is less than 2 minutes, the reaper poll interval may be as short as 30 seconds. If the maximum inactive interval is more than 15 minutes, the reaper poll interval can be as long as 6 minutes. Because the default timeout and maximum inactive interval is 30 minutes, the reaper interval is usually between 5 and 6 minutes. Set this property if you want to ensure that the reaper process runs at a specific interval. Use this property when you want the installation timed out sessions invalidated more frequently than 5 to 6 minutes. For example, setting HttpSessionReaperPollInterval=120 ensures that sessions are invalidated within 2 minutes of timing out. The minimum value for this property is 30 seconds. If a value less than the minimum is entered, the specified property is ignored and an appropriate value is automatically determined and used. The maximum inactive interval is the session timeout. The default is based on maximum inactive interval set in session management.
Data type Integer
Units Seconds
NoAdditionalSessionInfo
Set this value to "true" to force removal of information that is not needed in session identifiers.
NoAffinitySwitchBack
Set this property to "true" to maintain affinity to the new member even after original one comes back up. When a cluster member fails, its requests routed to a different cluster member, and sessions are activated in that other member. Thus, session affinity is maintained to the new member, and when failed cluster member comes back up, the requests for sessions that were created in the original cluster member are routed back to it. Allowed values, true or false. Default: false.

Set this property to "true" when you have distributed sessions configured with time-based write. Note that this property has no affect on the behavior when distributed sessions is not enabled.

[Updated in July 2010] OptimizeCacheIdIncrements [Updated in July 2010]
jul2010
[Updated in July 2010] Set the OptimizeCacheIdIncrements custom property to true to make the session manager assess whether the in-memory session for a web module is older than the copy in persistent store. Setting this property resolves the continually increasing cache ID.

If HTTP session management is configured to use session persistence and the user's browser session is moving back and forth across multiple web applications you might see extra persistent store activity as the in-memory sessions for a web module are refreshed from the persistent store. As a result, the cache IDs are continually increasing and the in-memory session attributes are overwritten by those of the persistent copy.

If the configuration is a cluster, ensure that the system times of each cluster member is identical as possible.

Avoid trouble Avoid trouble: You must have Fix Pack 6.1.0.13 or higher installed on your system before you can use this custom property.gotcha
[Updated in July 2010]
jul2010
SessionIdentifierMaxLength
Use this value to set maximum length that a session identifier can grow. In a cluster, because of fail-over when a request goes to new cluster member, session management appends a new clone ID to the existing clone ID. In a large cluster, if for some reason servers are failing more often, then it is possible that the session identifier length can be more than expected reducing room for URL. This property helps to find out the condition and take appropriate action to address servers fail-over. When this is specified, message is logged when specified maximum length is reached. Allowed value: integer.
SessionRewriteIdentifier
Use this property to change the key used with URL rewriting. Default key: jsessionid.



Related tasks
Configuring a unique HTTP session clone ID for each application server using scripting
Configuring session tracking
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Last updated: Feb 19, 2011 5:25:36 AM CST
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