Hi Richard,

Check out this KB article I wrote about the issue.

Although deleting an album will trigger an app restart, I would not expect that to happen when creating or renaming an album.

Are you able to move the media objects directory out of the application hierarchy? That might be hard to do if you installed the app at the root, but I bet it would offer you a significant reduction in restarts.

Results of further research have almost provided a solution but a new problem has appeared as a result (perhaps a new thread).

First a solution (of sorts).

Based on the suggestion in the above KB article, I decided to delve a bit further into the issue of setting up SQLServer-based session-state management in a shared hosting environment (specifically a shared SQLServer environment). After much querying of the almighty Google, I found the following posting which directly addressed the issue of not being able to use aspnet_regiis.exe to set up the session-state db due to permission issues related to the setting up of "Jobs" on a shared SQLServer instance. See particularly the section titled "Installing Session State with SQLServer mode on shared web hosting" at this URL. http://www.beansoftware....Session-SQL-Server.aspx

IT IS IMPORTANT TO NOTE that the above link does not provide complete instruction for editing the SQL script generated in the solution. You don't just need to remove sections related to setting up Jobs but any other calls to the "Master" database as well. Once modified, the script in this solution generated the necessary database object for managing session state on a shared SQL server. All that was required in this case was to set up a CRON job (which my hosting company makes easy to do) to run the clean-up procedures on a regular basis and everything is hunky-dory except...

Now when accessing the gallery after authentication, I get the following error (it should be noted that the gallery works fine when I'm not logged in).

Unable to serialize the session state. In 'StateServer' and 'SQLServer' mode, ASP.NET will serialize the session state objects, and as a result non-serializable objects or MarshalByRef objects are not permitted. The same restriction applies if similar serialization is done by the custom session state store in 'Custom' mode.

Stack Trace:

[SerializationException: Type 'GalleryServerPro.Web.Entity.ProfileEntity' in Assembly 'GalleryServerPro.Web, Version=2.3.3848.40189, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' is not marked as serializable.]
System.Runtime.Serialization.FormatterServices.InternalGetSerializableMembers(RuntimeType type) +7733643
System.Runtime.Serialization.FormatterServices.GetSerializableMembers(Type type, StreamingContext context) +258
System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.WriteObjectInfo.InitMemberInfo() +111
System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.WriteObjectInfo.InitSerialize(Object obj, ISurrogateSelector surrogateSelector, StreamingContext context, SerObjectInfoInit serObjectInfoInit, IFormatterConverter converter, ObjectWriter objectWriter) +161
System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.WriteObjectInfo.Serialize(Object obj, ISurrogateSelector surrogateSelector, StreamingContext context, SerObjectInfoInit serObjectInfoInit, IFormatterConverter converter, ObjectWriter objectWriter) +51
System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.ObjectWriter.Serialize(Object graph, Header[] inHeaders, __BinaryWriter serWriter, Boolean fCheck) +410
System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.BinaryFormatter.Serialize(Stream serializationStream, Object graph, Header[] headers, Boolean fCheck) +134
System.Web.Util.AltSerialization.WriteValueToStream(Object value, BinaryWriter writer) +1577

[HttpException (0x80004005): Unable to serialize the session state. In 'StateServer' and 'SQLServer' mode, ASP.NET will serialize the session state objects, and as a result non-serializable objects or MarshalByRef objects are not permitted. The same restriction applies if similar serialization is done by the custom session state store in 'Custom' mode.]
System.Web.Util.AltSerialization.WriteValueToStream(Object value, BinaryWriter writer) +1662
System.Web.SessionState.SessionStateItemCollection.WriteValueToStreamWithAssert(Object value, BinaryWriter writer) +34
System.Web.SessionState.SessionStateItemCollection.Serialize(BinaryWriter writer) +606
System.Web.SessionState.SessionStateUtility.Serialize(SessionStateStoreData item, Stream stream) +239
System.Web.SessionState.SessionStateUtility.SerializeStoreData(SessionStateStoreData item, Int32 initialStreamSize, Byte[]& buf, Int32& length) +72
System.Web.SessionState.SqlSessionStateStore.SetAndReleaseItemExclusive(HttpContext context, String id, SessionStateStoreData item, Object lockId, Boolean newItem) +116
System.Web.SessionState.SessionStateModule.OnReleaseState(Object source, EventArgs eventArgs) +560
System.Web.SessionState.SessionStateModule.OnEndRequest(Object source, EventArgs eventArgs) +160
System.Web.SyncEventExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() +68
System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) +75

Thanks Roger, I had a feeling that I needed to serialize the class but wasn't sure how to go about it in C#. Having an example class to work from paved the way. Simply needed to add [Serializable] before the class declaration and a "using System;" line at the top of the page. Hope that's all I needed. Recompiled the source, updated the assemblies in my app, deployed and, low and behold, it's working. Fingers crossed that new issues don't arise (a likely story) and I'm back to the process of testing to see if storing session state in SQL Server really prevents people from being logged out of the application when the application recycles. I've been looking into how authentication works when session state is set to SQL server mode but for some reason the whole concept is like a ghost on the Internet or I'm just not looking in the right place. Can't tell if things like authentication tickets have any thing to do with session at all or how these two systems interact. I would greatly appreciate it if anyone who knows where a good resource on this can be found, could post it to this thread. As I say, right now things appear to be working better than when the site was running In Process (and maybe I shouldn't question success) but I'd sure like a better understanding of what's happening and how Session State affects asp.net authentication or doesn't. Again, thank you Roger for a great application and help with this issue.