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The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines

The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
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Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
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If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
  • Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
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Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.

Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.

Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.

The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.

Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.

Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.



Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting

Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.

When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.

The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.

When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.

A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.

If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.

When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.

Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
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    #1

    Show Current Users

    Hi!

    Does anyone know of or have function that will allow me to display what users are currently logged in to my network system. I am using A5's log in dialog box.

    I can find out what users have been set up in the system, but I can't find an a5 function for the current users. Is there a reason why this is missing or am I not looking in the right places?

    Many thanks,

    Charlie
    Tags: None
    #2
    RE: Show Current Users

    Charles, that's an interesting question.

    I've always assumed that this kind of thing depends on the features of your local network operating system. Perhaps there's an easier way, but for a Windows peer to peer LAN I'd arrange for an entry to be made in a "user_log_on" table each time a user logs on. Then I'd arrange for this to be released or reset each time the user logs off.

    Perhaps others will have better ideas...

    -- t

    Comment

      #3
      RE: Show Current Users

      Charlie,
      We brought our own home-grown security system from version 1 as it did what we need. We have a table of all possible user-id's with their passwords. When they "log on" to the application, I flag their records as being active. When they "log off" or close the application, I remove the flag. The other value of this is that users cannot sign in as someone else if that person is already on. Our security system is used throughout the
      application(s) to allow or deny access to specific subsystems, allow change or view only, etc. Like I said, we've had this piece since early in version 1, and it has served us well.

      Tom

      Comment

        #4
        RE: Show Current Users

        Yes, I agree with both of you and I have been using this approach.

        But when I recently modified an app I was running, I guess I was kind of surprised to find out that there was no "a5_show_current_users" command. As you both know, there are several other commands that are available such as show groups and show users, which show the defined groups and users which the Administrator has already set up.

        I guess I'd like to hear from Selwyn on this as to why this command would not be available. Is it a limitation of the system itself? You would think that A5 would have to know when someone logged in through the logon screen as it would have to check the name in a database and ensure that the password was correct. In addition, it would be finding out what groups the user was assigned to. Why then could it not tell the Administrator who was logged in?

        Better yet, why could the Administrator not have access to this database in ordser to modify it, add fields for further processing, etc.?


        Charlie

        Comment

          #5
          RE: Show Current Users

          This type of command is not and could not be available because Alpha Five is not a client-server database. As such, when a user logs in, they log onto the local computer only. Their instance of Alpha Five has no knowledege of any other copy of Alpha Five on the network.

          -Lenny

          Lenny Forziati
          Vice President, Internet Products and Technical Services
          Alpha Software Corporation

          Comment

            #6
            RE: Show Current Users

            Will version 7 have this feature ?

            Comment

              #7
              RE: Show Current Users

              ...and this is why we implement our own security

              Comment

                #8
                RE: Show Current Users

                Lenny,

                Perhaps we could take this one step at a time. While I understand what you are saying, where is the password database kept? Wouldn't it be in the "server" portion of the application?

                If so, then why could it not be made available to developers to adjust? After all, that's all we're doing with the many workarounds we now employ for security.

                Charlie

                Comment

                  #9
                  RE: Show Current Users

                  Charlie,

                  this is beginning to sound like something that might fit better over in the Wishlist forum. It might attract a wider audience there.

                  -- t

                  Comment

                    #10
                    RE: Show Current Users

                    Hi Tom,
                    Your security feature sounds great. What I will like to know is this:
                    you wrote "The other value of this is that users cannot sign in as someone else if that person is already on."
                    What happens if the previous A5 session was not closed properly due to power failure, computer freezes, etc which will mean that users was not cleared from the user log on table. How will you get a user that is contained in this table to log in again since your security measure is suppose to prevent the same user from logging in twice. Thanks in advance for your response.

                    RAWLINGS

                    Comment

                      #11
                      RE: Show Current Users

                      As the security designer, I have unlimited access to clear any or all users. I've assigned myself and a few others clearance to clear users. I also have a developer's version if I need to open the tables independently. (yea, this is cheating, but since I can, I do.)

                      I've set up a few user-id's that have acces to clear users who are "locked" any of these users can perform the unlocking. The odds are fairly low that EVERYONE will be locked out at once, as we have different tasks to perform, but we all can do this ONE task.

                      Tom

                      Hope this helps.

                      Comment

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