How to maintain session+application state over web services?

[thesleepylizard]

Hi guys,

Prototyping .NET system for our corporation and ran into an issue. I'm sure there's a solution.

We currently have a VB6 client, and can't change that in the immediate future (trust me). Plan is, however, to introduce .NET web services as the middle tier and keep the interface (just acquire data differently).

Now here's the thing - I need to maintain application state and session state objects on the server (for data caching and identification purposes). But I can't make a web application because we need it to talk to the VB6 client. (DHTML user interface is not an option, sorry.)

So I really want the best of both worlds WRT web applications and web services. How can I maintain session state and application state when I'm acquiring data through web services?

Cookies won't real work with a VB6 consumer, storing 'em in a database defeats the point of caching the data. Any ideas?

Any advice is appreciated,
-sleepy

 

[stsuing]

Can you be more specific about what you need to store in state.
LookUpLists
Common Searches
User Profile.

I think you'll find that some stuff will get stored on the webservice and some down at the client. After all VB6 is a windows client and is not stateless.

What problem are you trying to solve?

 

[thesleepylizard]

For reference:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnservice/html/service08062002.asp

Also going to try putting my web services within the context of a web application and see if it helps.

I understood that basically anything could be stored in the cache - variables, DataSets, or most objects. ANyway, think i'm right now.