I have a site which has an area that requires authentication. Right now I use the roles attribute on all the controllers in that area, and I run a query to retrieve that users ID, and all their settings.

It seems like a code or design smell to me that I am retrieving the userid and settings each time a controller in that area loads up? I'm not sure if I should be using sessions, or if ASP.Net MVC 2.0 provides some unique way to handle this. Another concern is security.

Overall, I don't really know which way to turn. Design wise I would like the userId and settings retrieved only once when the user logs into the area. Right now I grab the userId each time a controller loads up, and then if required, I query the database for their settings each time as well.