Patent ID: 8078737

Claim:
A system for efficient storage of session state data, said system comprising: a cluster network of computer server devices, said network including a first server device having an engine node dedicated to processing a set of transactions and a second server device having a state replica that stores said session state data associated with said transactions in random access memory (RAM), wherein the state replica provides the session state data to the engine node, and wherein the engine node processes said transactions using the session state data; and a database connected to said cluster network, wherein said database stores a portion of said session state data; and wherein the engine node on the first server device transmits a hint message to the state replica on the second server device, wherein the hint message contains information instructing the state replica node to persist the portion of the session state data to the database; and wherein said state replica receives a hint message from the engine node and determines whether to disregard or to follow said hint message, wherein if the state replica determines to follow said hint message, the state replica persists the portion of the session state data to the database as instructed by the information in the hint message, otherwise if the state replica determines to disregard said hint message, the session state data is not persisted to the database and remains on the state replica.