hi may b his vl help u out to some extent cookies are only simple text that is stored on the client with some useful data to identify subsequent requests from the client and help the server to serve the client efficiently. cookies can hold data like books bought during an http session until the session expires. if you could store the nature of these books (e.g. fiction, technology etc.) then this data could be used to know the browsing behaviour of the user. Sessions are objects (not text files) that store data and regarding a particular session and help the servlets to transfer this data to other servlet invocation so that the WEB SERVER understands (or is made to understand) that these requests have come from the same client. e.g. HttpSession objects are used to store such information. Happy Coding :-)