asp.net - Can you share the session variables between two .net 2.0+ applications?

Question

I was told this works, but...

I guess I'm just not getting this, it seems there's a hidden step I may be missing, can anyone correct this or point out my mistake? Thanks.

I have a blank solution:
- inside is two .net 2.0 web applications
1) webapp1
2) webapp2

I want them to share the same session data.

My page setups:

Application 1:

Session("value") = "this is the value"

Application 2:

If Not (Session("value") Is Nothing) Then
    value = Session("value").ToString()
End If

My thought process:

1) go to services, turn on the asp.net state service
2) open the web configs in both projects: set the

< machineKey 
validationKey="BFE2909A81903BB303D738555FEBC0C63EB39636F6FEFBF8005936CBF5FEB88CE327BDBD56AD70749F502FF9D5DECF575C13FA2D17CA8870ED21AD935635D4CC" 
decryptionKey="2A86BF77049EBA3A2FA786325592D640D5ACD17AF8FFAC04" validation="SHA1" />
< sessionState mode="StateServer" stateConnectionString="tcpip=localhost:42424" 
cookieless="false" timeout="20"/>

in both sites.
3) compile and test the site
4) become disappointed because it does not work. I never see the session from the second webapp.

Answer 1

You cannot share sessions between different ASP.NET applications without some custom code. What you did in web.config was to use an out of process sessions, which means that data will no longer reside into memory but into the memory of a dedicated machine. This is useful for server farms and it uses the ApplicationName to know which application the session belongs to. So basically your applications need to have the same name if you want them to share sessions. There are some dirty workarounds though.