Store the settings of anyone who ever connected? For how long? Forever, just in case? Silly. And why do you even assume the server has to have a database? Why should it be required to have one, why should it have to store the stuff? What is your take on statelessness? you concentrate so much on the abuses of cookies and client side storage/computation, but you're not addressing the advantages. I doubt you're aware of them to be honest.