License Statistics lets you track and report software license usage gathered from supported license servers and writes the usage statistics data to a MySQL database.
Ways of gathering data
License Statistics can gather both realtime and imported data as described in "Gathering realtime data" and "Gathering imported data" sections, below.
| Gathering Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Realtime | Data gathered from the license server at specified query intervals. |
| Imported | Data gathered from license server log files. |
Gathering realtime data
License Statistics realtime monitoring lets you see usage information from the time the license server was added to License Statistics to be monitored.
Gathering imported data
Importing denied request logs lets you view the history for servers that were added to License Statistics.
With imported usage, License Statistics does not need to query the license server. Therefore, it does not matter if the session started and stopped between two subsequent update intervals. Logs record information about all activities regardless of how long these activities lasted.
Since imported usage reporting doesn't require a connection to the license server, it can be used for:
- Billing purposes, where the license servers are at the customer's site and License Statistics software is at the vendor's site, making this feature especially helpful for companies that do back-billing or pay-per-use billing.
- Analyzing data from remote license servers in departments that run on separate networks.
Note: In addition to gathering usage data, License Statistics lets you generate data for denied user requests (FLEXlm/FlexNet, Reprise License Manager (RLM) or IBM LUM license servers only).
Accessing License Statistics data
License Statistics runs an embedded HTTP server that handles requests for HTML pages, which contain usage statistics tables and graphs, and makes the pages accessible to view and manage from a web browser. Web pages are automatically generated and updated, so no user interaction is required to generate and maintain the latest statistics.
Usage statistics are time-sensitive; that is, they are updated based on your system clock time. To ensure the time is updated regularly and accurately across the machines, both the license server and License Statistics server should use NTP (Network Time Protocol). Otherwise, the time between the license server and the License Statistics server may be out of sync, which affects statistics.
Before using License Statistics, you must configure it for your site, including specifying the HTTP server port. License Statistics runs as a service on Windows or as a daemon on Linux. Because License Statistics runs as a background process, it will run even when no user is logged into the License Statistics server machine.
For definitions of terms that are specific to License Statistics and feature usage monitoring, see the License Statistics Glossary.