[MarkLogic Dev General] Application (and session) variables???

[Wyatt]

Is there such thing as an application level variable in MLS?  Something 
that can be created when MLS starts and is resident in memory all the 
time?  I've looked around the documentation and can't anything, am I'm 
missing something?

On a side note, I've been using session variables in lieu of application 
variables and found some inaccuracies in the documentation for 
xdmp:get-sesssion-field() function...  The documentation says it returns 
a xs:string, but I believe it returns an item().  When I store an 
element() with xdmp:set-session-field(), I get an element() from 
xdmp:get-session-field().  It would also be nice if the default (2nd) 
parameter of xdmp:get-session-field() would take an item rather than an 
xs:string.

Thanks

Wyatt