If the web server uses cookies (e.g. jsessionid), there is a new feature on the http outbound gateway in 2.1 (Release Candidate 1 was released last week). Update your POMs to 2.1.0.RC1. GA will be out soon.
If you set 'transfer-cookies="true"' on <int-http-outbound-gateway/> a set-cookie header on the first response becomes a cookie header in the reply message and is available on subsequent message sends to other gateways.
A typical flow might be...
...->logonGateway->transformer(set up next request)->requestGateway->...
Here's the doc from the reference manual...
Cookies
Basic cookie support is provided by the transfer-cookies attribute on the outbound gateway. When set to true (default is false), a Set-Cookie header received from the server in a response will be converted to Cookie in the reply message. This header will then be used on subsequent sends. This enables simple stateful interactions, such as...
...->logonGateway->...->doWorkGateway->...->logoffGateway->...
If transfer-cookies is false, any Set-Cookie header received will remain as Set-Cookie in the reply message, and will be dropped on subsequent sends.
Gary P. Russell
Spring Integration Team
SpringSource, a division of VMware