Sticky Sessions

[pure]

What does a HTTP load balancer stick on. Is it a sessionid cookie or a http header property? Is it possible for it to stick to something in a SOAP header?

Why im asking is becouse it seems like webservices using EJB's does not seem to be able to access anything about the HTTP header only the soap header. However webservices as servlets seems to be able to access http header and cookies.

Is it better to go for webservices as servlets (Service Endpoints) if i want to use a HTTP Loadbalancer? Or can i achive stickyness without having to tamper with the HTTP header?

Thanx!

[ben.wang]

don't know for sure the hw one. But mod_jk is using sessionid.

[brian.stansberry]

I'm not too sure about hw ones either, but a believe a lot of the newer hardware (e.g. a layer 7 switch) promises the ability to route packets based on user-specified application layer data. In the end an HTTP header is just some text in a particular point in the request stream; a SOAP header is some text in a different place. If the hw vendor promises the ability to switch based on arbitrary data, it should be configurable to handle the SOAP header.

Course, haven't bought such a piece of hw myself, so don't know from experience.