How Siteminder Session Timeouts are Calculated and Recorded an in ODBC Session Store

Products

• SITEMINDER

Issue/Introduction

The user session can be configured with an Idle Timeout and a Maximum Timeout.  The Idle Timeout and Max. Timeout are configured within each Realm.  This KB details how the Max and Idle Timeouts are calculated and recorded in a Session Store hosted on an ODBC server.

Environment

PRODUCT: Siteminder

VERSION: Any

COMPONENT: Session Store

SESSION STORE Type: ODBC

OPERATING SYSTEM: Any

Resolution

The Siteminder Session Store in an RDBMS database (ODBC) is comprised of the following tables:

Siteminder Session Store Tables

ss_chunkeddata6
ss_expirydata5
ss_sessionmaintenance5
ss_sessionspec5
ss_sessionvar5

 

Idle Timeout

• The Idle Timeout is the amount of time a user can be idle before their session times out.
• The Idle Timeout is stored in the 'ss_sessionspec5' table 

Idle timeout is a calculation based on the values in the 'maxidletime' field and the 'lasttouch' field

COLUMN	VALUE	PURPOSE
maxidletime	Seconds	Lists the Idle Timeout value (in seconds) from the Realm where the initial authentication occurred.
lasttouch	Epoch Time	Timestamp of the last time the user was active on the resource.

 

Idle Timeout => (lasttouch + maxidletime)

The session will be timed out if the the current epoch time value is greater than the sum of the 'lasttouch' value + 'maxidletime' value

 

sessionid	expirationtime	maxidletime	lasttouch	status	sessionblob
Hk6aRsUZLe1u7CwgFe+nKWX	1763752569	3600	1763745369	0	ApfnfE+Eateu5M5kqg/k51N+D2g....

In the example of a session in a session store (Above) we can see that 

maxidletime = 3600 [Seconds]

Realm Max Timeout (Calculated) =  1 hour

lasttouch= 1763745369 [Epoch]

Last Touch (Calculated) = Friday, November 21, 2025 5:16:09 PM

Idle Timeout = (1763745369 + 3600)

 

IdleTimeout (calculated) = 1,763,748,969   (Friday, November 21, 2025 6:16:09 PM)

 

Maximum Timeout

• The Maximum Timeout is the total amount of time a session can be valid. 
• The Maximum Timeout is stored in the 'expirationtime' field in the 'ss_sessionspec5' table 
• The 'expirationtime' value is written in Epoch time.
• Maximum Time is calculated a the time the session is written to the session store.

Maximum Timeout => ({time at authentication} + {Max Time of Realm})

expirationtime= 1763752569 [Epoch] 

Maximum Timeout (calculated) = Friday, November 21, 2025 7:16:09 PM (GMT)

 

 

 

Additional Information