Upgrade license type has been introduced to resolve all problems you may encounter using additive licenses and is meant to replace them. Upgrade license type applies only to network licenses. Unlike the additive license, the upgrade license does not create a new license pool next to exclusive license. Instead it upgrades the exclusive license count by particular number of licenses, simutanously being completely transparent to the client. This approach allows for more flexibility in handling license addons.
Just like any other license, the upgrade license lifetime may be limited by using START and END directives. The license server automatically handles upgrade licenses by activating or deactivating them at midnight. However it is possible to create an upgrade license that will last for ever.
It is possible to upgrade particular exclusive license as many times as necessary, as long as COUNT is within its range. It will sum up all of the license upgrades, allowing for different expiration date for each upgrade.
Upgrade license may be locked to the license server HostIDs preventing from using the same upgrade license on more than one machine. Duplicated instances of an upgrade license within one license server will be discarded.
There are restrictions on whether the upgrade license may be applied to the exclusive one. First of all, its lifespan must be within exclusive license's lifespan. Besides that, neither upgrade nor exclusive license can be unlimited.
Client HostIDs are not supported with upgrade licenses. LMX_GetLicenseInfo will not report any upgrade licenses in both network and local paths. These are consequences of the design assumption that the upgrade licenses are transparent to the client. However exclusive license reports now its upgrade license count in both LMX_GetFeatureInfo and LMX_GetLicenseInfo.
License template
To maintain maximum compatibility with corresponding exclusive license, the upgrade license template allows for strictly selected set of settings. All of them behave the same as for exclusive licenses, except for SHARE which is limited to VIRTUAL only. Some settings, like feature name, COUNT and KEYTYPE, are required by the license generator to create an upgrade license. Other settings that may be used with upgrade licenses are START, END, SHARE, HOSTID_MATCH_RATE and server hostids.
Example
Following license template would results in an upgrade license that would increase feature f1 license count by 1 andbeing valid from the license server startup to 2030-01-01.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<LICENSEFILE>
<FEATURE NAME="f1">
<SETTING COUNT="1"/>
<SETTING KEYTYPE="UPGRADE"/>
<SETTING END="2030-01-01"/>
</FEATURE>
</LICENSEFILE>