Getting started
Hi there,
is there any sample code for the API that we can take a look at? The API documentation installed with the product is not really useful at all. What we after is a sample/guidelines how we can use API to provide licensing/protection for client/server based application at runtime:
- We want to license only server, i.e. no client-side licensing
- We don't access to the server but have access to a unique identifier for this server, number of users as well as some reasonably flexible storage that we can use to store license(s) if required.
- I guess it's somewhat similar to a web server licensing however there are no samples/walkthroughs that cover this scenario either.
The pricing information is not available through the web site at all. I'm not quite sure at this point how we're supposed to commit to a particular software protection suite without actually knowning how much it's going to cost us?!
Any help would be appreciated.
George
Can you give me a little more detail on what you're trying to license on the server?
Are you trying to control the number of clients concurrently using/accessing the server?
Hi George,
We 'think' we understand the scenario you describe but hope you can help us remove some ambiguity.
We'd really appreciate it if you would slap together a Powerpoint or Visio diagram describing the problem. Do you think that would be possible?
Thanks,
Terrence Nevins
Program Manager - Software Licensing Protection
Let me see if I can explain what we are after without any diagrams 
Our product is a client-based software designed to work with Microsoft CRM. When we connect to CRM, we have access to the following information:
- Organisation name
- CRM license key
- Guid of CRM license (as an alternative to a key)
- Number of active users in CRM (not real-time of course, just named licenses)
We would like to be able to issue a license that is tied up to and validated against the information above. We don't really care how many times they install our package or on how many computers. But say, for example, if they bought a license for 20 users and number of active CRM users is 21, we'd like to know about that. So basically, we cannot use client computer to store license information and we'd prefer client not to call external license validation service too often (e.g. every time they start) or at all as deployment can be internal one (submitting initial license request via net/phone/email is OK).
Since we're working with CRM, we can customise it to create storage for licensing information if anything needs to be stored on the server.
Additional requirements are to be able to issue a new license (say, to increase number of users) and somehow tie the license to a date stored on the server (to provide subscription-based service as well as evaluation edition of our software). The dates are stored explicitly so the product will have to provide some protection against tampering.
I feel that some coding is needed to implement our requirements, however, library documentation and samples are lacking, to put it mildly.
I still don't have any information about the pricing - makes it extremely difficult to decide regardless of any code. Any word on that?
Hope it's clearer now.
George
Hi George,
We've got a better picture of your need with this latest explanation. Also someone is looking into your request regarding cost.
We'll get back to you shortly with some answers on both of these.
Thanks,
Terrence Nevins
George,
I'm working with one of the devs to get a proof of concept approval for a preliminary design idea we've been bouncing around. As soon as I get confirmation that we have a sound approach for advising you I will get in touch with you to make sure this architecture meets your needs. After that time, I will update this thread for the communitie's benefit.
Thanks,
Terrence
There's a couple more moving part to figure out using the just released product. www.softwarepotential.com
I'll update this when I know more.
Terrence
Hi George,
We are just now getting the stability in the area that I need to look at to test out some ideas. We'll get back to you on this one (and the forum) as soon as I've got an implementation.
Terrence
We don't have a parity solution for this in SLPS. The SecureLM solution was not fully implemented to this also proved to be a challenge.
This is a great scenario and we hoped to support it in SLPS 2008 -- but couldn't put the right resources on it soon enough.
Thanks,
Terrence Nevins
