Glossary

The following table defines many of the terms that are used throughout the FlexNet Manager for Engineering Applications documentation.

Term	Definition
concurrent license	Entitlement defined as a fixed number of licenses available to be shared among a group of users. Also referred to as network or floating licenses.
contract	A document that defines the terms under which an enterprise purchases product licenses from a software vendor. These terms typically include the contract’s start and end dates, the fixed and variable costs, remix rules for the contract, and any license usage restrictions (for example, geographic restrictions). Product licenses purchased under a contract are grouped into one or more license pools.
counted license	A license with a non-zero license count. A license server is required to manage a counted license. Counted licenses can either float on a network or be node-locked.
data aggregation	The process through which FlexNet Manager for Engineering Applications determines which products are being used, based on the feature usage contained in report logs.
daemon	A process that “serves” clients. Sometimes referred to as a server or service process.
debug log file	One or more ASCII text files written by the license server. A debug log file contains status and error messages useful for debugging the license server.
duplicate grouping	Duplicate license requests from the same user, vendor, host or display share one license.
end user	Your customer to whom the FlexEnabled product is supplied.
end-user license administrator	The staff member or members at the end-user site chartered with installing the FlexEnabled product and administering the license file and server as appropriate. This could be the same person as the actual user of the product.
entitlement	The characteristics that define the legal right to use the feature or product.
feature	A separately licensed unit of functionality in a product. The meaning of a feature depends entirely on how it is used by a product developer. For example, a feature could represent any of the following: A product consisting of one or more components A specific version of a product A part of a product A piece of data (restricted via the access routines) One feature can be included as a part of many different products.
feature license	A license to use a discrete unit of functionality in a software product. A software vendor delivers feature licenses to the enterprise in one or more license files. Feature licenses are distributed over a network by a vendor daemon running on a license server. Feature licenses are used when an end user accesses licensed parts of a software product.
feature license event	A feature license event records the usage of a feature license by an end user. The license server creates feature license events each time a feature license is used.
feature line	A line in a license file that licenses a particular feature. A feature line begins with one of the keywords FEATURE , INCREMENT , or UPGRADE .
FlexNet Agent	An application deployed on each FlexNet license server machine that provides communication between one or more license servers and FlexNet Manager for Engineering Applications.
FlexNet Manager for Engineering Applications	An application deployed at an enterprise to manage FlexNet licenses and license servers. FlexNet Manager for Engineering Applications comprises two modules—FlexNet Manager for Engineering Applications Admin and FlexNet Manager for Engineering Applications Reporting.
FlexNet Publisher components	The individual parts the vendor delivers to the enterprise that compose the FlexNet Publisher solution.
FlexNet Publisher toolkit	Contains all the necessary components and libraries used by the software publisher to create a FlexEnabled product.
FlexEnabled product	A product, instrumented with calls to the FlexNet Publisher client library, that requests a license.
floating license	A license that can authorize usage of a product by one of a group of users on a network. A license server is required to manage a floating license. Floating licenses can either be counted or uncounted. An uncounted floating license is effectively a site license.
fulfillment record	A data structure specific to a publisher’s FlexEnabled application that contains license rights.
heartbeats	Periodic messages sent from a FlexEnabled product to a license server to solicit replies that ensure that the license server is still running. Heartbeats can be implemented automatically or called explicitly from a FlexEnabled product. If called explicitly, they are referred to as manual heartbeats.
hostid	A means used to uniquely identify a specific system.
hostid type	The scheme in which the hostid is determined for a particular system architecture.
license	The legal right to use a feature. FlexNet Publisher can restrict licenses for features by counting the number of licenses already in use for a feature when new requests are made by the FlexNet Publisher product. FlexNet Publisher can also restrict product usage to particular node or user name.
license certificate	One or more feature lines specific to a vendor’s FlexEnabled product. This certificate is provided to the end user who incorporates it into a license file.
license file	A license file is a collection of feature licenses. It is a text file specific to an enterprise site containing the license certificates from one or more software publishers and/or vendors. The enterprise installs the license file on a license server. This file can contain descriptions of the following, for one or more FlexEnabled products: License server node or nodes Vendor daemon or daemons Licenses
license-file list	A list of license files separated with a colon “:” on UNIX and a semi-colon “;” on Windows. A license-file list can be accepted in most places where a license file is appropriate. When a directory is specified, all files matching \*\.lic in that directory are automatically used, as if specified as a list.
license key	A 12- to 20-character hexadecimal license signature used to authenticate a license. See also signature.
license model	The set of defining characteristics for product entitlement. The fundamental layer of a licensing policy.
license pool	License pools are used to define common license terms for a group of product licenses purchased under a contract. These terms include remix rules and license usage restrictions.
license server	A license manager daemon ( lmadmin or lmgrd ) and one or more vendor daemon processes. License server refers to the processes, not the computer on which they run.
license server machine	A computer system that runs the license server processes. The license server machine hosts all site-specific information regarding licensed feature usage. Multiple license server machines used for three-server redundancy can logically be considered the license server machine. Also known as license server node.
license sharing	Duplicate license requests from the same user, host or display share one license. See duplicate grouping.
license system	A system used to license product features. FlexNet and IBM’s LUM are examples of license systems.
licensing policy	The constraints applied to the legal right to use a feature.
`lmgrd`	The daemon that sends client processes to the correct vendor daemon on the correct machine. The same license manager daemon process can be used by any application from any vendor because this daemon neither authenticates nor dispenses licenses. lmgrd processes no user requests on its own, but forwards these requests to a vendor daemon.
network license	Entitlement defined as a fixed number of licenses available to be shared among a group of users across a network. Also referred to as concurrent or floating licenses.
node-locked license	A license that can authorize use of a product to be run on a specific machine based on a unique identifier known as a hostid. Node-locked licenses can be counted or uncounted. Node-locked, uncounted licenses do not require a license server.
options file	A text file implemented for a particular vendor’s product by a FlexNet license administrator at an end-user site to customize the behavior of the vendor daemon or to enable or restrict the use of the licenses managed by the vendor daemon at that site.
package	A set of independent components to be licensed as a single product. Packages are defined in the license certificate, not in the product; this allows a vendor to change the components of a package until just prior to shipping the license.
package suite	A set of products combined into a package with the restriction that the package components of a single license may not be simultaneously shared.
product	Software that comprises one or more licensed features.
product choice	A product choice captures the results of the product resolution process for each unique set of possible products to choose from.
product license	Defined in a contract, the product license specifies the quantity purchased, pricing information, and the license start and expiration dates.
product license event	A product license event records the usage of a product license by a user. Product license events are not created directly by the license server; they are created by the product usage aggregation process by combining feature license events.
product resolution	The process of determining which product was used when the feature license events could have come from more that one product.
product usage aggregation	The process of creating product license events by analyzing feature license events. This is how FlexNet Manager for Engineering Applications identifies which products were used.
remix	Remixing is the process of optimizing the money spent on software by adjusting the quantities of Product Licenses within a set of rules defined by the Contract and Pools. Customers are usually limited to a fixed number of remixes per year over the life of the contract. The remix process uses product usage patterns and the limits defined in the contract and pools to forecast the number of licenses required for each of the products purchased under the contract.
report log file	The feature usage data written by a single vendor daemon. Report logs are not human readable; the data is compressed and authenticated for use with FlexNet Manager for Engineering Applications. FlexNet Manager for Engineering Applications uses the data contained in the report log files to produce various usage reports.
rotation	The action of switching the report log file by moving the existing report log information to a new file, then starting a new report log with the original report log file name.
served license	A license that requires the management of a license server.
signature	A secure, 12- to 120-character hexadecimal number that authenticates the readable feature line in the license file, ensuring that the license text has not been modified. See also license key.
software producer	A company that makes software products that use a licensing system to control access to various functions (features) of the product. The software producer may also be the software vendor.
software vendor	A company that sells licensed software products. The software vendor may also be the software producer.
suite	See package suite.
supersede	A way of changing characteristics of a license with new ones, thereby making obsolete the earlier ones. For example, a supersede license can be issued to both change the name of a feature and obsolete the older name at the same time. This is more powerful than upgrading.
tamper-resistant licenses	An encryption method employing an industry-recognized asymmetric, public/private key digital signature.
unassigned feature	A feature that is not associated with any products.
uncounted license	A license that does not restrict the number of uses of a feature. Usually node-locked to a machine hostid.
unserved license	A license that does not require the management of a license server.
upgrade	The concept of upgrading the version entitlement for a given license certificate.
vendor	See software vendor.
vendor alias	The alias given to one or more vendor daemon names that symbolically represents the vendor’s name from whom the daemons are deployed.
vendor daemon	The server process that dispenses licenses for a particular software publisher’s features. The software publisher builds this binary using libraries supplied by Flexera Software.
vendor name	A unique vendor name that is supplied to the software publisher by Flexera Software. This is used as the name of the vendor daemon.