Session Management

Items that need to be stored for session management

There is a unique org.osid.OsidContext object for each user. The OsidContext object gets loaded into the RepositoryManager when a user starts a new "search session" (selecting sources, conducting a search, paging through results, selecting certain results, etc.). The RepositoryManager will then "know" the user throughout the user's session in the system. Some of the items below could be passed in a java.util.Properties object to the getAssetsBySearch() method of org.osid.repository.Repository.

Key	Description	Type
`repositoryId`	identifies which repository belongs to the user of this OsidContext	long, alpha-numeric String
`xSessionId`	necessary to identify a specific user and allow that user access to X-Server services	long, alpha-numeric String
`xGroupNumber`	identifies a result set created by submitting a query with the /wiki/spaces/SLIB/pages/2921168923 command. This number is necessary for asynchronous searches, retrieving results and pagination	short, numeric String
`newSession`	a flag indicating whether the user is starting a new search session or continuing with a previous one	short String ("true"/"false")
`resultsPerPage`	stores how many results are showed per page. Needed for paging through results.	java.lang.Integer
`resultsCursor`	stores which results are currently being displayed. Needed for 'next' and 'previous' paging options	java.lang.Integer
`resultsTotal`	total number of results	java.lang.Integer
`asynchSearchFlag`	flag indicating whether an asynchronous search should be performed	short String
`sourceIds`	a list of source identifiers representing which databases should be searched	java.util.List or multiple Strings

Issues

How do we know when a user's session is done? This is up to the consumer. In our case (using Servlets), we can choose when to invalidate a session: a timeout & when the search dialog is closed.
Will the metasearch engine support multiple users logged on at once? Yes.