might manoeuvre themselves into a dead
end. This can happen in particular if licenses
are deactivated offline, which can take some
time between the deactivation request and
the resulting license update. That is why
CodeMeter allows both options:
■■ Allow a negative quantity, monitor
the deactivations as they happen via
CodeMeter License Central, and intervene
if needed.
■■ Forbid negative quantities and offer user
support where needed.
Activating Licenses
The user activates the licenses on the server,
e.g. via WebDepot. With the choice of five
licenses for each user during the license
creation process, the user can employ different
servers on the network. For our example, we
assume that the user is activating all licenses
on a single server.
Borrowing Licenses
Once the licenses have been activated, the
user can borrow them for use on different
computers, e.g. by using License Manager in
our example. License Manager is a sample,
included in the CodeMeter SDK as source code
and can be freely customized.
■■ the freshly borrowed local license, which
can only be used on this specific machine.
Deactivating Licenses
Can users deactivate licenses on the server
while they have been borrowed? It is simple
to do so, as long as enough licenses are
available. In our example, the user has five
licenses, of which one has been borrowed.
After one license has been deactivated,
four remain on the server – three readily
available, and one currently borrowed.
In the standard scenario, the license is kept
on a server on the network. The user starts
License Manager on the client that will receive
the license. To find the license on the network,
the user selects the “Include Remote Server”
option. In our example, this takes him to the
local PC that is set up as a server.
The user now selects the license he wants to
borrow and clicks on “Borrow License”.
The user is then asked to define the period of
time he wants to borrow the license. As the
maximum period has been set to 30 days, the
user can choose any period of time between
1 second and 30 days. License Manager is a
sample application; the actual format of the
borrowing period can be adjusted to match
the needs of the actual target group.
After the borrowing process is complete, the
user will see two items:
■■ the license on the server on the network,
with one of the five available licenses now
marked as used, and
10
What happens if the user deactivates more
licenses than are available? This would
create a temporary negative quantity, but
the option has to be allowed, since users
The standard setting allows temporary
negatives, which is the user-friendly and
resource-efficient option.