In a recent post to his blog, Mike Bernat gets down to basics with one of the key pieces of functionality in PHP data persistence - cookies vs. sessions.

Knowing the basics of cookies and sessions is essential to any successful PHP programmer. It is useful to store pieces information on the users computer for later use. Things like when they last visited, language of choice, age, etc. Cookies and Sessions are the perfect solution to our needs.

He talks about both, including demonstration code to clarify some points and a chart at the end to compare their features, strengths, and weaknesses.