Friday, July 16, 2004

Ingenieum's Licensing Functionality

Ok - I need to add license monitoring to Ingenieum.
 
Basically, the original premise of licensing was for CDROM apps. Now, it has to extend to websites as well.
 
The problem is that the original MenuServer only took licensing into consideration if the link that was about to be launched was an application (12345.ald) - now it appears that we have to use the Application Launcher to go to web sites too - therefore, the only way that licensing can work for the *current* version of Ingenieum's MenuServer is to force all websites to be opened in a new browser window.
 
So the item link must have an entry in the Program's tab - then, the link will be opened using Application Launcher, which will then use the AsynchDownload class to contact the MenuServer to say that a license needs to be checked out from the pool.
 
Then, when the next user requests that link, we can check the license pool and dishonour that request if there are no licenses available.
 
Hmmm - this should work out ok - as long as the end user administrator likes the idea of opening licensed web content in a new window. Must ask Anna about this.
 
So that's as much as I can think of at the moment. More later.
 
 

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