Which two statements about a stateless application are true? (Choose two.)

A stateless application architecture treats every request as an independent, self-contained transaction. The server does not store any client session data between requests. Therefore, each request must include all the information necessary for the server to process it (B). Because no session context is stored on a particular server, any server in a cluster is capable of handling any request from any client at any time. This allows load balancers to distribute traffic freely across all available servers, which is a key enabler for horizontal scalability and high availability (A).

C. This is the definition of a stateful application, where the server is required to maintain context or session data from previous interactions.
D. This describes a requirement for stateful applications, often implemented with "sticky sessions," to ensure subsequent requests are routed to the server holding the session state.
E. This statement is overly broad. While application servers themselves are stateless, the overall system often relies on an external, shared state store like a database or cache.

1. Fielding, R. T. (2000). Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures. University of California, Irvine. In Section 5.1.3 ("Stateless"), it is stated,"...each request from client to server must contain all of the information necessary to understand the request, and cannot take advantage of any stored context on the server. Session state is therefore kept entirely on the client." This directly supports option B.

2. Cisco. (2022). Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) Fundamentals, Release 5.2(x). In the section "Load-Balancing Stateless and Stateful Services," the documentation explains that for stateless services, "any server can service the request," which directly supports option A.

3. MIT OpenCourseWare. (2013). 6.170 Software Studio, Spring 2013. Lecture 18: Scalability. The lecture notes state, "Stateless: Server retains no client state. Each request is self-contained... Advantages: Easy to scale horizontally (just add more machines)." This supports both options A and B.