EDM Licensing

Owned by Former user (Deleted)
Last updated: Feb 28, 2023 by Arne Tøn
4 min read

The EPM Licensing Philosophy

 
When a customer has bought a product from Jotne EPM Technology, license information about product and customer is stored in the Jotne EPM Technology license server. A license is identified by a license identification number (license id). The last step of the license registration is normally to send a mail to the customer with the license id and the password he needs when accessing the Jotne EPM Technology license server.
All EDM programs are checking that they have license to run by searching for a license key and check that the found license key gives the program license to run. License keys are stored as environment variables with name on the form:
EDM_LIC_<product number>
Every license key is generated for the actual machine where it is to be used.
 
The procedure for installing license keys is as follows:

  1. The software installation script starts the program InstallLicenseKey.exe.
  2. InstallLicenseKey.exe gets the machine identification number.
  3. The customer enters the license id and the password he got from Jotne EPM Technology.
  4. The customer must also enter machine name or machine description for later identification of the machines where the license is used.
  5. When the customer push the "Start installation" button, the program sends the information to the Jotne EPM Technology license server which generates a license key. The license key is returned to InstallLicenseKey.exe, which install the license key.
  6. The EDM program is ready to run.

 

Figure 2 Screen shot of InstallLicenseKey.exe
 
There are several incidents that may occur when the InstallLicenseKey.exe is not capable to install the license key. Then the customer must run a web procedure to get the license key generated and install it manually. One obvious reason for such an incident is that the machine where the license key is to be installed has no network contact with the Jotne EPM Technology license server. If this is the case, the following message will pop up:

Figure 3 Screen shot of error message when installing license key
 
As you see the customer is advised to start http://www.jotne.com/epmtech/license. This web application looks as follows:

 
 
In this web form the customer enters License Id, Password, Machine Id and Machine Name / Description and press the Submit button. If the license generation was successfully, the Jotne EPM Technology license server returns with a form like the following:

 
 
In the form you get a manual procedure for installing the license key which is:

  1. Start Settings->Control Panel->System.
  2. Open the Advanced Pane in the system properties dialog.
  3. Press the Environment variables button.
  4. Add a new system variable with Variable name = "EDM_LIC_103" and variable value = "1ZMZ5YW-6aAln5h5nuFzy0NNRRdSgqvvsR'kkUVgGHwl11'dR,S18o0,gd4EOdMb7eCPh4(hmKz(JmMV1,,/"

 
When generating a license key the Jotne EPM Technology license server check if it is legal to generate more license keys for the specified license Id. If this is not the case, InstallLicenseKey.exe shows the following response:
 

 
In this case the customer must either buy an extra license or move a license from a machine another machine. This can be done by the above mentioned web application. By pressing the "Start browser" button, the web application is started with input fields filled and looks like this:

 
Here you must select either "Purchase one extra licenses" or "Move license to another machine". If you select "Move license to another machine" you must select the machine from which the license is moved from and indicate the reason why the license is moved.
The example above indicates one problem with the EDM license system: The license key is generated for the machine where it is to be used. To control this, a machine identification is stored in the license key and later controlled when the actual EDM program is checking if it has license to run. As machine identification, the MAC-address of the network adapter is used. An effect of this is that, if the network adapter is changed, installed EDM licenses will not work. Therefore EDM license keys must be installed again if the network adapter is changed.
 
EDM License Keys shall be installed automatically by a web-based EDM License Installation Tool that contacts the EDM License Server in Oslo, Norway to access information about the EDM Product to install and its purchased configurations. EDM Licenses may also be installed manually, in case the EDM License Installation Tool does not obtain contact with the EDM License Server.
EDM Products that may only run when connected to an EDMserver are free of charge. To run these products, the user must still accept the conditions under which EDM products are distributed. The products will be installed with a free of charge license that binds the installation to the hardware on which it is installed. To start the program, it must obtain a connection with an EDMserver. The maximum number of such connections allowed by the EDMserver is a scaling parameter in the EDMserver License. This implies that if EDMvisualExpress(client) is distributed freely within an organisation, the number of EDMvisualExpress(client) Connections purchased with the EDMserver must be tuned accordingly.