Differentiation between Session and Cookie

Hello Friend,

I am totally confused between Session and Cookie. According to me the 'Cookie' used to store the browser activity of the internet user. But my problem is that I am unable to get exact difference between Session and Cookie. For me both these entities seems to be have identical functionality. If you knows any difference between Session and Cookie, then please try to share it with me. I am waiting for your reply.

Cookies are small files and which is crated when you visit a Web site for the first time. Many websites, including Microsoft, use cookies. Cookies tell us how often you visit our Web sites, allowing us to identify the information that interests you. In this way we can bring you more information on topics that interest you and less about those who do not interest you. Cookies can help you improve your efficiency.If you do not save or do not leave personal information on a site, the server knows only a user with your cookie has returned to the site. No other information is transmitted.

The cookies are basically hold in the user's browser while sessions are not. I think this is the important differentiation between Session and Cookie. In java session class is used for to define session. In other words it collects together defaults as well as properties, which is used by the mail API's. A single default session can be shared within various applications over the desktop. It is also possible to create unshared sessions.

A Cookie is defined by the communication protocol HTTP as a result of information sent by a HTTP server a HTTP client, that it returns during each interrogation of the same HTTP server. It is sent as a HTTP header by using web server to the web browser and which returns unchanged header by the browser every time it accesses the server. A Cookie is basically used for the purpose of authentication, store specific information about the user and state maintenance. Such as site preferences or the contents of any online shop

Hi,

A common method for storing user information is to use session state, but it itself depends on cookies. If you do not set an expiration date for the cookie, it is created, but it is not stored on the hard disk of the user. Instead, it is stored in the session information of the user. If you want to know more about the cookie, then please visit below link:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178194.aspx