Software License Management Blog by X-Formation

Why is completing the next version of License Statistics taking so long? During the past fall, we invested more development resources in License Statistics than in any of our other products, and still the progress seems slow. Yet, finally, we see a light at the end of the tunnel.

The fact that the work on License Statistics has taken so long is really no wonder, because the changes to this upcoming version have been a massive undertaking! Since v3.0 of License Statistics, we've completed more than 145 issues. It's safe to say that the new version will be a surprise for many customers, because we've re-engineered almost all the core parts of the software.

Currently, as several License Statistics beta users know, we've replaced the embedded SQLite database with an embedded MySQL database. The existing database simply could not scale to the needs of our clients. Some existing customer setups store more than 95 million records, which require almost 10 GB of space for the database alone.

Don't worry; you won't need to be a database expert to run the new software. We've paid special attention to ensuring that the new database works embedded and without configuration as it did previously. On the other hand, external databases are an option for those who want enhanced scalability and operability in terms of insight, custom reporting and backups.

The first time you load the new version of License Statistics, it will convert your existing SQLite databases to MySQL. This is a one-time procedure required for the new version to work. Although we've spent hundreds of hours to optimize the process, it's still time consuming. For a typical environment, the conversion takes less than 1 day to complete. However, for large setups, such as those with 95 million records, it takes up to 5 days.

Why is this needed? Because MySQL is a far superior database and License Statistics can do calculations at the time it inserts records instead of having to run overnight. As a result, we've been able to remove the nightly graph generation; instead, everything is now done in real time.

With the database work completed, we've turned our attention to improving the web-based user interface, with our first goal being to replace Analyzer. We're working on this at the time of this writing, and thousands of lines of web-based code have already been written in order to achieve easy report generation.

Our ultimate goal is to replace all the individual tools, including editing of databases and custom reports, in order to provide everything from a web-based user interface. This is a lengthy process though as it requires rewriting nearly the entire application. So far, we've only rewritten half of it.

If there are no further delays, soon we will release License Statistics v3.5, which will no longer include Analyzer. In the release following v3.5, we'll focus on creating a web-based tool for custom reports.

We've implemented many features in this upcoming release that were not possible before: importing of license manager log files, user-authentication, and a much more efficient user interface for navigation and manipulation.

Rewriting half of the product is by no means trivial. Thousands of man hours have been invested in this release, and we're getting close to the finish line. After all the hard work that's gone into License Statistics, we're certainly looking forward to presenting you with a far superior product this year. I believe you'll find that the effort has been well worth the wait.

We're happy to have made our first release of LM-X in this new year. Since the last release, we've spent just over 2 months addressing almost 50 issues. These latest changes make LM-X more stable than ever, and at the same time give you, our customers, increased ease-of-use and performance.

The release notes for LM-X v3.3 can be found in our Knowledgebase at http://kb.x-formation.com/questions/208/LM-X+v3.3+Release+Notes.

Of the many new features we've implemented and bugs we've fixed, some are naturally more interesting than others. One such improvement is that you no longer need to build the SDK, without sacrificing existing security benefits. We'll post a separate article on this soon.

Another feature for which we had many requests was to use the native system hostids instead of obfuscated LM-X hostid's. We've included this important change in this release, allowing for even simpler implementations.

Furthermore, it's now possible to host more than 10,000 license clients under Linux. We spent quite a bit of time engineering the license server to become even more efficient, allowing it to easily scale beyond 10,000 clients. In our lab tests, we reached 11,000 client connections before we decided it would accommodate most customers' needs.

This new release also features a new type of bios hostid; improvements for dongle usage under Mac OS X x64; listing of borrow, trial and grace licenses; and many other enhancements.

It's important to note that we drive innovations based on extended R&D efforts. Unlike some of our competitors that provide "license server performance tools and extensive end-user debugging tools for license problems," we spend our energy on making solutions that actually work for end users. There is no need for extensive debugging tools, because our end users don't have these problems. LM-X offers many features that result in zero-effort installation for end-users: a license server that requires virtually no maintenance; automatic server discovery; hostid match rate, which allows flexible license hostid handling; easy trial versions; secure store; and much, much more.

As always, this release has been based on suggestions made by you, our customers. In this particular release, almost 90% of the issues handled have been those reported by our customers. Naturally, we're pleased to get this participation and feedback, as it's you who use and know our products in real action, and you who get the immediate benefit of the improvements we make.