Seeing all the modules tracking members online as well as people joining the bot channel, I think it would be sensible to create one central online instance.

The instance would need to do the following things:
1) Add buddies logging on and remove buddies logging off. It has to differentiate between members/guests, chars on notifylist and other characters (like for !is checks).
2) Add characters joining the pgroup, and remove them when leaving.

Personally I favor the approach to put this information into a table, as it would allow all kinds of queries for other modules fairly easy. The table should contain relevant informations (prof, faction, level, ai-level, breed, org) for other modules.
Other approach would be to save this information in an array and add some interface to access this. This wouldn't allow easy queries though.

Modules that want to do anything with people online or in chat group would just have to query this table then, without any need to do the tracking and adding themself. Modules using those information are the Online module, the Count module, the Team module, and the new SB module just getting written.

Things like the logon information or information on joins could be put into the module or stay in their own modules, they just act on one of those two events anyways.

Im starting to get scared now.

Ive spent the past few days thinking about this myself. However, while i want an online list in the database for several reasons, however im debating if an array to store general information about all online users is a better way than using the database. As such i am very open to feedback on the subject.

I have online cell in my members table already, have news, leadernews and realname cells as well.
I also don't wipe the list each time a roster updates, to work with the new org. msg. channel for people that join/leave org, so they're added/deleted right away instead of having to wait for the main db to update.

Ok. Random thoughts.

online table containing the following:
userid
name (duplicates information availible elsewhere but makes it convenient (dup))
member level (dup, mainly for raid bots/guests, wont come into its own right until my roster cleanup is done and all members will have a level)
admin level (dup)
level (dup)
ailevel (dup)
ailevel name (dup)
breed (dup)
profession (dup)
faction (dup)
org (dup)
org rank (dup)
org rank name (dup)
botname (what bot the user is online on, allows relayed bots to share online listings in the same table)

Thouhts welcome.

online 0/1
autoinvite 0/1

I can see what they are saying, online 0/1 is needed if the user is also pgroup 0/1 as the user might both be online in the guild, AND in the pgroup.

Anything related to buddylist tracking etc will make it into members table.

announce 0, 1 gc, 2 pgroup, 3 al
bot 0/1

The need for the distinction between online and in chat-group I see, so one of three stats: online only, in chatgroup only, both.

But anything else should be done by fields in the members table. This structure should only include people whose online status should be tracked or who are in the chat group.

Another thing that belongs in a permanent members/users table, not a temporary online table