Licensing and Hardware Protection in QuickField 5.2 Professional

Licensing in QuickField Professional.

To be able to run professional version of QuickField you must purchase a QuickField license.

QuickField licenses can be restrictive. They can restrict usage of QuickField specifying the subset of granted features and/or license expiration date. Currently, any feature is related to a class of specific physical problems (for example, Electrostatics, Heat Transfer Analysis, etc.). The license granting such feature grants you the right to solve the problems of this kind with QuickField.

Whenever you purchase a new license, you get a hardware key protecting your QuickField software from unsolicited copying, and the password linked to it. We encode the data describing the purchased license into this hardware key and into unique password linked to it.

If your license does not grant you the full set of QuickField features, you can always extend your license purchasing additional license features. Similarly, you can extend a temporary license purchasing its continuation for the next period. Since in these cases you do not purchase a new license, you retain the same hardware key. At the same time, we provide you with another password that reflects the new subset of granted QuickField features and/or the new expiration date of the license. After that you will only have to replace the old password with the new one.

When you run QuickField for the first time, it does not start unless you enter your password upon request. Make sure that your hardware key is available at that moment, otherwise QuickField does not accept the password.

To make your hardware key available, begin with attaching it either to a parallel or to an USB port depending on the key type. After that, availability of your hardware key depends on the kind of QuickField license you have purchased. We provide two kinds of licenses: Single and Multiple.

Single license grants you the right to run QuickField on single computer at a time. The hardware key provided with such license will always be available for QuickField sessions on the computer the key is attached to. Regardless of the number of sessions started on this computer, neither of them will access another hardware key. On the other hand, this key will never be available for QuickField sessions started on other computers.

Multiple license grants you the right to start QuickField sessions on several computers in your local network simultaneously, limiting the number of sessions started at any given moment of time. This limit is encoded in the hardware key provided with the license. Attaching several of such hardware keys to computers of the same network, you increase the granted total number of sessions on that network to the sum of individual limits granted by the corresponding multiple licenses. Provided the number of the sessions started on the network is strictly less than this total, at least one of attached hardware keys remains available for new QuickField sessions anywhere on that network. As soon as the number of started sessions that access multiple license hardware keys becomes equal to the granted total, there will be no available key until one of the started sessions ends.

Accessing a Multiple license hardware key from other computers on the network requires to install the corresponding Security Server software on the computer the key is attached to.

License Types and Hardware Protection Keys in QuickField 5.2.

Hardware protection key is a small electronic device that contains vital confidential information about the QuickField license you have purchased. Depending on its type, the key should be attached either to a parallel, or to a USB port.

The key shipped with a Single license should be attached to the workstation where you will run QuickField. The key shipped with a Multiple license can be attached to any computer on the same network with the workstations where you will run QuickField.

QuickField 5.2 supports the following types of hardware keys provided by Rainbow Technologies, Inc.

Sentinel Scribe hardware key cannot be used with Multiple QuickField license since it cannot be accessed over the network.

Sentinel Scribe keys for USB ports do not exist.

We never ship QuickField 5.2 with Sentinel Scribe keys.

NetSentinel-C hardware key cannot be used with Single QuickField license since it always requires to install NetSentinel Security Server software on the computer it is attached to.

NetSentinel-C keys for USB ports do not exist.

We never ship QuickField 5.2 with NetSentinel-C keys.

Sentinel SuperPro hardware key can be used with both types of QuickField licenses. You need to install Sentinel SuperPro Security Server software only for Multiple licenses.

Sentinel SuperPro keys exist for both parallel and USB ports.

We ship new licenses for QuickField 5.2 only with Sentinel SuperPro keys.

Hardware Protection Keys and Security Servers in QuickField 5.2.

Security Server is a software application that keeps track of licenses granted to QuickField sessions. Any instance of Security Server mediates between hardware protection keys attached to its computer and workstations running QuickField on the same network. To use different types of hardware protection keys you currently need to invoke different types of Security Server software.

QuickField 5.2 Setup, depending on your choice, installs two different types of Security Server software provided by Rainbow Technologies, Inc.

You can install both of these Security Servers on the same computer and invoke them together. On Windows NT/2000/XP computers, you can install any server as NT service. In this case, the installed server will be started automatically at boot time and kept running even when no user is logged in.

You can easily define which of Security Servers to install. Keep in mind that:

NetSentinel and Sentinel SuperPro security servers track QuickField licenses differently. Unlike Sentinel SuperPro, NetSentinel server counts QuickField sessions started on the same workstation as one. With Sentinel SuperPro server you can start only as many of QuickField sessions as specifies your license. On the other hand, you can start unlimited number of QuickField sessions on the computer with attached Sentinel SuperPro key, having stopped your Sentinel SuperPro server in advance. In such case the key will not be available for QuickField sessions on other computers in your network.