O3 License Administration

Following is a description of license administration for O3 version 5. O3 5.0 Licensing Model describes the characteristics of the new licensing model.

Description of the License mechanism

O3 5 manages licenses comprises of a key and a licensee (licensedTo). This data is stored in files with the extension .license.
Licenses can be added to the system both using user interfaces (License Manager) included in the O3 modules (Browser, Server Administrator, Designer, etc.), or by copying .license files to the /license folder under the installation path.

The structure of the .license file is as follows:

licensedTo = <Company or Person name>
key        = <license key>

There are several types of licenses. Each one of them has a product edition associated: Standard, Professional or Enterprise. More information about editions can be found in O3 5.0 Licensing Model

O3 Liceneses can be of the following types:

Any given license activates a set of modules with a specific scope (depending on the license edition). For instance, the server license enables the O3 Server, the Server Administrator, and the Builder; while the Client license enables the O3 Browser.

Example

Just as an example, to enable the execution of the O3 Server with 10 web nominated clients and a desktop client, the licenses needed are as follows:

• One server license for 11 nominated connections
• One web client license for 10 nominated users. This license needs to be installed in the server box because of the web access
• One desktop client license for 1 nominated user. This license needs to be installed in the PC where the O3 Browser will be used.

License Activation

O3's licenses need to be activated before they can be used. When activating these licenes, Ideasoft enables their use in the computer where the license was installed.
The activation is required for every license and can be done bothe online or manually, directly with the License Manager or by email respectively.

Online (automatic) activation requires an internet access to be available from the computer where the license is installed, both for the server and desktop computers.

Manual activation can be done through the phone or email. When contacting Ideasoft for a manual activation you will be asked to provide the Request Code as indicated by the O3 License Manager.

Server Licenses

Nominated Users

The nominated users control specifies an upper bound that limits the number of users defined in the server. This section describes the way that users should be defined taking into account the license restrictions. To better understand the concept we can imagine the server as having slots where the users and nominated connections are placed and associated to phisical users by the Administrator.

Each nominated user can open a single conection to the server at any given time. This means that the same user can not access the server through two separate connections simultaneously. Currently, when a nominated user establishes a connection with the server, any other open connection for the same user is automatically closed.

Multiple editions in a single server

Any server can have more than one edition installed at the same time. For instance, a server can have a Professional edition enabled for 20 nominated users, and an Enterprise edition enabled for 5 nominated users.
This example would require two separate licenses, one for the Professional Edition and one for the Enterprise Edition.

In situations like this one, when the server is enabled with more than one Edition, one of these editions is declared as the Main Edition while the others are consiered as Extensions. As a general rule, the Main Edition is the most restrictive edition, therefore, the extensions "extend" the functionalities of such an edition with more powerful features. Any given user will be associated to a specific edition thus being granted access to the functionalities of that edition.

Main Edition identifies the server installation for tasks such as migrating to a higher edition. This task would simply be replacing the Main Edition of a server to another one, without the need to modify any user definition.

Assigning users to nominated "slots" and editions

Every time that the server includes nominated users or combines more thatn one editon, it is necesary to bind users to the different licensing policies.
This binding is done by assigning users to specific predefined roles.

These predefined roles are as follows:

These roles are automatically created by the server according to the licenses installed.
The only role with users assigned by default are "bi-users" containing users "user" and "admin".

Users control - Administration Mode

O3 maintains several controls to verify that the users defined in the server do not exceede those allowed by the license for each predefined role.

One of these controls is performed in the O3 Server Administrator directly when users are assigned to any of the predefined roles. If more users, than those allowed by the license, are defined, the Server Administrator denies the operation and displays an error message with the restriction. When assigning users to roles through the use of Groups (for instance when using operating system gropus), it si responsability of the Administrator to make sure that the limits are not exceeded.

Periodically the O3 Server runs some tests to make sure that the users are within the licensed limits. It could happen that maybe due to a license migration, the number of users defined in the server for a given edition exceeds the limit of nominated users for that edition.

In that case, the Server automatically switches to a restricted operational mode called Administration Mode, that only allows administrational tasks on the server, restricting any other kind of access such as queries to the datamarts. While in this operational mode, administrators can connect to the server using the O3 Server Administrator to verify and modify the current user assignment and make sure that they do not conflict with license restrictions.

Examples

1. 5 nominated professional users
   • All 5 nominated professional users must be assigned to role "bi-users"
2. 10 nominated professional users, 5 nominated enterprise users. The main edition is Professional.
   • The 10 nominated professional users must be assigned to role "bi-users"
   • The 5 nominated enterprise users must be assigned to role "bi-users-ent"