Session Event table in Business Central

In the D365 Business Central database and previous NAV versions up to NAV 2013 you will find a table called ‘Session Event’. In this table session event information is stored:

When I start or close the Windows Client for example this will be logged in the Session Event table. The Session event table contains the following fields:

• User SID (GUID)
• Server Instance ID
• Session ID
• Event Type (Logon, Logoff, Start, Stop, Close)
• Event Datetime
• Client Type (Windows Client, Sharepoint Client, Web Service, Client Service, NAS, Background, Management Client, Web Client, Unknown, Table, Phone, Desktop)
• Database Name
• Client Computer Name
• User ID
• Comment
• Session Unique ID (GUID)

Investigation at customer premises learns that this table could sometimes contain a lot of records (millions). Root cause could be due to extensive webservice calls that are being triggered or not optimal service tier settings. This could lead to problems sometimes.

In the fields mentioned you could also see that webservice calls are being logged in the Session Event table. Interesting especially for support ocassions is to notice which user(s) were affected by a service tier that was manually stopped. That will be logged also. In the comment field you will see this value then a service tier was stopped. When the user was connected to this stopped service tier this will be logged in the Session Event table:

The next question now rises: how is this table managed by Business Central? In Business Central there are some settings for management of the Event Session table. They are to be found in the General Tab of the service tier:

Non-Interactive Sessions Log Retain Time Interval
This is a new setting introduced in Business Central and Specifies the time interval that background and web service sessions remain in the Session Event table before they are deleted. This value has format d.hh:mm:ss. This is a very nice feature to keep control of the record count in the session event table.

Session Event Table Retain Time Interval
This setting is available since NAV2013+ and specifies the time interval that sessions in the Session Events table remain before they are deleted. This value has format d.hh:mm:ss.