Session state vs. View state

In some cases, using view state is not feasible. The alternative for view state is session state. Session state is employed under the following situations:

Large amounts of data - View state tends to increase the size of both the HTML page sent to the browser and the size of form posted back. Hence session state is used.

Secure data - Though the view state data is encoded and may be encrypted, it is better and secure if no sensitive data is sent to the client. Thus, session state is a more secure option.

Problems in serializing of objects into view state - View state is efficient for a small set of data. Other types like DataSet are slower and can generate a very large view state.