Welcome
Integrating RLM into your product
As an ISV you integrate RLM by adding calls from the RLM client library into your application. Only if you plan to ship concurrent-use (floating) licenses will you also configure and build a license server. You then ship your product plus a few additional components of the RLM license system, as required. You can accomplish the engineering portions of these tasks in less than an hour – the hardest work is deciding what to license, and what license rights to grant to your customers. Once you integrate RLM, the additional components you ship are:
If you provide only Fixed (node-locked) licenses to your customers:
A license file to describe your customer’s rights to the product (custom-generated for each of your customers)
The rlm utilities (rlmutil) provided by Reprise Software.
Note
NO SERVERS NEEDED
If you provide Concurrent-use (floating) licenses to your customers:
A license file to describe your customer’s rights to the product (custom-generated for each of your customers)
The rlm utilities (rlmutil) provided by Reprise Software.
The rlm (generic) license server provided by Reprise Software.
Your custom license server (Built from components from Reprise Software with a minimum of configuration)
Except for the license file, the components are the same for every one of your customers. The actual license file, which describes your customer’s rights to the product, will (in almost all cases) be different for every one of your customers.
When deployed to support concurrent-use (floating) licenses, RLM is a client-server system, with license requests transmitted over TCP/IP from the client (your application) to the license server that controls license usage rights. When deployed to support node-locked licensing, no network connection nor license server processes are needed.
In all cases, all components, except the license file, are the same for every one of your customers. The actual license file, which describes your customer’s rights to the product, will (in almost all cases) be different for every one of your customers.
What sets RLM apart?
RLM was designed from the start to emphasize openness, transparency, and simplicity.
RLM is open because we publish the format of our report log file, so that you, or your license administrators can always examine and generate usage reports on licensing activity from the RLM servers.
RLM is transparent in the sense that we do not allow “back doors” which lead to unique behaviors from one ISV to another. In addition, we have removed policy from the application code, and placed it into the license key itself, so that your license administrators will be able to understand the license terms without having to understand your implementation.
RLM is simple because we include functionality like truly automatic selection of license servers from a set of multiple, independent servers. In older license management systems, the ISV ends up writing much code to manage multiple license servers. This is handled by RLM itself.