title: Storing Objects in a Session in Rails
body: <p>I have always been taught that storing objects in a session was a bad idea.  Instead IDs should be stored that retrieve the record when needed.</p>
  
  <p>However, I have an application that I wonder is an exception to this rule.  I'm building a flashcard application, and the words being quizzed are in a table in the database whose schema doesn't change.  I want to store the words currently being quizzed in a session, so a user can finish where they started in case they move on to a separate page.</p>
  
  <p>In this case, is it possible to get away with storing these words as objects in the database?  If so, why?  The reason I ask is because the quiz is designed to move quickly, and I'd hate to waste a database call on retrieving a record that never changes in the first place.  However, perhaps there are other negatives to a large session that I'm not aware of.</p>
  
  <p>*For the record, I have tried caching it with the built-in memcache methods in Rails 2.3, but apparently that has a maximum size per item of 1MB.</p>