A handful of questions and a couple of documentation errors

[Ruslan Zasukhin]

on 1/11/04 11:50 PM, Ken Ray at kray at sonsothunder.com wrote:

> 3) In the Connection Generator, I notice that you can set an expiration
> date on the license files you create. Two questions here:

> (a) When the license times-out at the customer's location, what error
> message do they get when Valentina tries to connect?

You can see this with DEMO license file from our site at 1 of the next
month.

On start of Vserver it say in the LOG file
    cannot find any license file.


> (b) Does the 'license_batch' file understand the expiration so that
> after the expiration date those license are re-usable?
> Or how does this work?

Hmm. 
NO. I did not think about this.

In fact this was just an idea, to give to VDN developers easy way to create
license files that expire, and therefore provide e.g. SUBSCRIPTION way of
sale of your products.

I assume that many/most developers will NOT use this feature.
So consider it as a draft idea.

> For example, suppose I only have 25 connections left in my batch
> file and I create a license file for 20 licenses that expires on
> 1/1/2005. This leaves me with 5 connections to "spend". In December
> 2004, I remind the customer that they need to pay their annual fee for
> our software before it expires on 1/1/2005.

I agree with you.
To support this feature correctly, Connection Generator must store in the
batch file that on SOME date, N license must return back.


> If they *pay* for the renewal, I'd assume we need to generate a new
> license file that works until 1/1/2006. Is this done by opening the
> license file that was set to expire on 1/1/2005 and changing the
> expiration date to 1/1/2006 and then replacing the license file on their
> server with this new one? Or some other way?

> If they *don't pay* for the renewal and let it expire, how do we get
> those 20 connections back into our "pool" to be sold to someone else?
> Since we have our 'license_batch' file file only contains 5 connections
> left, and the 'license_win' file that contains 20 connections that times
> out 1/1/2005, how do we combine the two?

Ken, I hope you are not going to use feature right now?  :-)
And if you think it is interesting, then let's all together discuss it and
think how to make it better.

-- 
Best regards,
Ruslan Zasukhin      [ I feel the need...the need for speed ]
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e-mail: ruslan at paradigmasoft.com
web: http://www.paradigmasoft.com

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