Hi Gastón;

   My framework does this by using the Activate and Deactivate events in the Window that is controlling the overall Application's processing. The Activate records the time that the App User entered the App and the Deactivate event records the time that the user left the app (aka "last active").

   The difference between these times is the time the user actually spent within the App. My framework also records over all key stroke counts and how many times an App user has gone through (used) a particular menu item (Select # vs Clicked #).

HTH

Regards ... Chris

Read your comment again, and no. .. previous comment is probably not what you are looking for.

I'd say: when a user connects and disconnects to your database, insert the a row with the userid and application id in some table.

When the user connects you insert a row and when the user disconnects, you delete that row first.

Then when you want to shut down, you first check that table.

It's not 100% waterproof, as when a user is thrown out, the row probably still exists in the database and the applcition might be closed.

The problem I see in the first place is that you want to track the time of "last interaction" with anything in the application to be able to make a decision whether you can close down an application or not.

Even if you'd add code to all visual (and non visual!) objects, you still have the problem that you'd have to decide on a transcurred time of inactivity to be able to make the conclusion that the user is no longer using the application and you can close it down.

What if a user is watching a screen for a very very long time and doesn't do anything else (maybe using one of the other apps meanwhile?)? Do you close down after 10 minutes, 30, 60 of inactivity?

If you can make a decision on that time interval of inactivity, you might as well use the applications object's idle event after all. (see one of my other comments). When you open the app you set "Idle(number of seconds)".

After "number of seconds" your event will be fired where you can close the application using

Halt close;

No need to put code in every visual / non visual object, just use the idle event: the question you have to solve remains the same.

regards

What if your PB app kept track of the "last user interaction" timestamp internally, such as a global datetime variable, but only recorded/updated that timestamp in the database on a slightly more leisurely interval, say, every five minutes?

I think you need to clearly define what "last user interaction" means. IMHO, a mouse move event sent to a DataWindow doesn't signify user interaction, but a keystroke or mouse click handled by any object within the app does. What is your definition of the term and is it a reasonable definition that makes sense?

If your app has been constructed using a framework, then it should not be overly difficult to put code in the ancestor objects to update a global datetime variable on an as-needed basis. If it were me, I'd consider not even updating the global timestamp unless 15 seconds (or more) had passed since it was last recorded, because you have to ask if any finer granularity really makes a difference? If you do not have/use a framework, then yes, you have a non-trivial amount of work ahead of you.

Your app could utilize a timer object to update the database every so often, say, five minutes, for example. I would use an additional, separate transaction object to accomplish this, so as to not adversely affect anything the user may be doing. The timer object could keep an instance copy of the global timestamp it last sent to the database so it could determine if the timestamp has changed since the last timer "pop" and bypass recording the same timestamp in the database if it has not changed.

SetWindowsHookEx

Finally I coded all key, mousemouve, clicked and selection changed events for all princpal master visual objects. IT works fine and i seems that performance is not affected.

Thank you everyone for your help!