The information on this page refers to License Statistics v6.11, which redesigned license server administration and resulted in removing functionality related to "realtime" license servers and "gathering type." If you are running an older version of License Statistics, see documentation for versions prior to v6.11.

This glossary lists terms that are specific to License Statistics and feature usage monitoring.

Actions

License request

A request made by a user to obtain a particular software license.

Usage

Refers to the use of a license, which means that the license is taken from a pool of available licenses.

A user can use two licenses of the same feature, as shown below.

Users Using License


Borrow
A type of license usage that allows a user to use a floating license without being connected to the license server.
Denial 
The denial of a request for a license.
License Reservation

License is assigned to a specific user and cannot be utilized by another user without an administrator reassigning the license to another user. 

For reservations, a "user" is defined by a set of rules with various parameters, which may include the following, depending on the license server:

  • Dynamic
  • User
  • User Group
  • Host
  • Host Group
  • IP
  • Project
  • Display

Realtime Denial

The denial of a license request.
Denied Requests Log
One or more log files that contain data about denials.
Feature Versioning

When Feature Versioning is set, features shown in lists include a separate entry for each version of that feature, and are named feature_version throughout License Statistics.

Monitoring 
Gathering information from a particular license server about feature usage details.
Importing 
Gathering information from a license server log file about feature usage details.
Last Update Time
The last time at which License Statistics received an update from a license server.

Entities

Software
An application.
Log file
One or more ASCII text files written by a license server. 
License
License for particular software.
Feature

The definition of a license.

The parts of a feature are:

  1. Name (for example, Windows).
  2. Version (one feature can have multiple versions, such as Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8 and so on).
  3. Type, which can be:
    1. Floating
    2. Node-locked
    3. Token

As shown in the diagram below, a feature is defined by its name, version and type. There can be multiple versions with the same name, but each version can have only three license types: nodelocked, floating, or token. Although the features may share the same name, each feature with a different version and/or type is an individual, unique feature.

Feature

 

License manager

A solution that provides the ability to manage licenses.
User 

An application or person that requests a license.

Technically unique User in all contexts is a unique username.

Host 

The computer on which a user is accessing a license.

A user can use a feature on more than one host, and a host can be used by more than one user, as shown below.

User on Hosts

Technically uniqueness of the Host depends on the context:

  • for reporting purposes, tracking licenses usage and denials: unique pair of hostname and ip address 
  • for administration and licensing purposes: unique hostname


License server

Software hosting licenses for a single software vendor. A license server can be an individual license server or a license server group (two or more license servers that are treated as one). 

Vendor
The manufacturer of a software application using a particular license manager.

Data source 

The source of data being used for statistics gathering (Remote, Imported, or End User).
Linux systemRefers to Linux x64 platform.
Windows systemRefers to Win64 platform.