>>I guess the one main point behind using tables as opposed to using the session really comes down to this: needing the data to live beyond a session's lifetime in some sort of "raw" (and easily queried) form. Otherwise, the Session and/or Cache a better (performance) bet.
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>If you need to cache beyond the session, could you use one mechanism during the session, like a state server, and then serialize to SQL or XML when the session ends to persist it beyond the session?
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>BOb

Sure, but it's not particularly easy to query serialized info. You've also got the problem of knowing "when" to serialize it. I don't think there are any triggers available when a session expires (are there? That would be kind of cool).