License Management

[cpns]

I am currently evaluating EA and wish to know how licenses are managed. I understand that there is an option for floating licenses, but if I were to opt for normal licences how are they managed or enforced?

My primary concern is in a situation where an employee (or sub-contractor) leaves or hardware goes down, are the licenses transferable between machines or staff, or would I loose that license in such a situation?

[bioform]

Search the EA site using "Floating License", or just go to this link...

http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/products/ea_corporate_floating_version.html

[«Midnight»]

Remember that this is a different product level of EA, just as Professional and Corporate licenses are different. This will affect your purchase decision.

[bmioch]

Please note this is a user forum and all replies here are not official. If you would like to submit an enquiry to sales, please email [email protected].

[Dave_Bullet]

For floating licenses - these are "acquired" when a user starts EA.  An EA administrator (ie. someone who can administer the license file aka "key store") can set these licenses to expire after an arbitrary period (days, weeks etc...).  This means if a staff member started EA and "walked" - your license would get freed (or you can use the admin tool to free up a license).  After the expiry period - the walking user's copy would no longer run (they would have to come back in and reconnect to refresh their key for another X days, weeks etc...)

To protect your licenses - only 1 or 2 of you should have the keystore password and the keys themselves.

When you install the keys you buy from Sparx into a keystore - the keystore admin program encrypts the keystore file specifically for the location you install into (may also use a composite of host name, IP etc... who knows).  What this means is no-one can simply copy the license file and steal your keys.  The copied file won't work.

Hope that helps.  It's actually quite a simple and elegant solution (meaning - there are no fancy license servers that go down etc...) but it can be made secure.

David.

[cpns]

I appreciate the time you have all spent on this but it appears that to a man you have mis-interpreted my question. I fully appreciate the concept of floating licenses, and this is already clearly explained ion the EA web-site.

What is not clear to me are the consequences of using the Professional Edition license with respect to license ownership and transferrability.

It seems I have not made myself clear, and as already pointed out, it is probably an issue for Sparx sales - on the other hand some real user experiences with licensing might be helpful.

I would point out that you have not all wasted your time. The insight into the floating license mechanism has been useful - the fact that FlexLM is in no way involved is encouraging!  

Thanks.