Stateless means
there is no record of previous interactions and each interaction request has to
be handled based entirely on information that comes with it.
In computing, a
stateless protocol is a communications protocol that treats each request as an
independent transaction that is unrelated to any previous request so that the
communication consists of independent pairs of requests and responses. A
stateless protocol does not require the server to retain session information or
status about each communications partner for the duration of multiple requests.
The Internet's
basic protocol, the Internet Protocol ( IP
), is an example of a stateless interaction. Each packet
travels entirely on its own without reference to any other packet. When you
request a Web page from a Web site, the request travels in one or more packets,
each independent of the other as far as the Internet Protocol program itself is
concerned. (The upper layer Transmission Control Protocol - TCP - does relate
packets to each other, but uses the information within the packet rather than
some external information to do this.)
A stateless
service is one that provides a response after your request, and then requires
no further attention. To make a stateless service highly available, you need to
provide redundant instances and load balance them.
A stateful
service is one where subsequent requests to the service depend on the results
of the first request.
HTTP is a
stateless protocol, which means that the connection between the browser and the
server is lost once the transaction ends.
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