ASP.net session how to set some object to expire earlier

Question

I set session to be 24h.

I would like that one object, ie Session["Table1"] to expire after 20 minutes, because it's too big.

Can I manage just that one object to be different?

Thanks

Answer 1

Cache has expiration capabilities. Unlike session, it is shared by all users accessing the web application (per process). Depending on your needs, this may be a good or a bad thing.

An alternative is to store a user-specific cache key in session, and have that key point to an item in the cache that expires sooner than the session.

Consider

• A 24 hour session is long, perhaps too long.
• Minimize the amount of data you read from session (serialization penalty for out of process access).
• Use read-only session when possible (avoids lock contention between closely-timed requests from the same user).
• SQL Server (and most databases) have extremely efficient caching mechanisms for frequently accessed data. Before you start storing whole tables in memory, be sure you actually need to do so.