Ensuring Affordable Access to Complete Usage Data

ENH RecordsImproved Reporting with an Enhanced Debug Log

Motivation: SAM and Sources of Usage Data

• usage analysis is a critical element of a software asset management (SAM) program

– provides information to enable many software business issue decisions

• license manager log files are the primary source of usage data

– enterprise end users have little to no control over choice of license manager

• Flex is by far the dominant license manager in use today

Motivation: Flex Log Files

• the Flex license manager creates 2 log files– debug log

• ASCII, open text• basic information only

– no precise out/in matching– no license sharing details– no project information– no software version details– no token usage details

– report log• encrypted (closed), requires proprietary tools• more complete usage information

– no token usage details

Motivation: Goals

• complete– all necessary/desired information

• open– ASCII text– published specification

• can be validated– usable by ISVs for pay-per-use and compliance verification

• ease of deployment– fast deployment: daemon based not client based– ISV development effort must be low

• affordable– for ISVs: integration and licensing costs can not

discourage implementation– for end users: analysis tools must be priced to make

buy/develop decision easy

How It Works: Using Available Callbacks

• Flex ISV customers are provided callbacks they can use in their vendor daemons

• they can write whatever they want into the debug log during these callbacks

• the Enhanced Logging Initiative convened interested parties to define:

– a common format for enhanced records to be written into the debug log

– common source code for vendor daemon integration to write the enhanced records

How It Works: Registering ENH Functions to Callbacks

• if ISVs are already using callbacks– then add calls to ENH functions in the

existing callback functions

• if ISVs are not using the callbacks– then register the ENH functions to the

callback

• primary ENH functions– enh_init()

• called after lmreread• determines duplicate grouping

information from FEATURE lines in license files

– enh_out()• called in the pre-checkout filter• writes an ENH_OUT record

– enh_in()• called in the pre-checkin filter• writes an ENH_IN record

How It Works: Building an ENH Daemon

• add LTI provided source to daemon build environment (source tree and makefile)

• modify two files (enh_vendor.c and enh_vendor.h) to customize for the specific software vendor

• register or modify callbacks

• build -> test -> deploy

• approximate level of effort -> ½ day

How It Works: Enabling the ENH Daemon

• standard vendor daemon replacement process

• set environment variable<daemon>_ENH_RECORDS=1

How It Works: Processing ENH Records

• ENH_OUT records (pre-checkout)– process subsequent “standard” debug records to determine

• checkout or denied• queuing or update

• ENH_IN records (pre-checkin)– process subsequent “standard” debug records to determine

• linger or direct checkin

ENH Records: Basic Usage Logging Standard Fields

Field Type Description

feature string feature name

user string user logon ID

host string host name

timestamp string milliseconds since 00:00:00 Jan. 1, 1970 (UTC)

formatted as <seconds>.mmm

num_licenses int number of licenses requested/returned

session_handle int handle assigned by the license server

display string display details

addr string IP address of user

ENH Records: Basic Usage Logging Advanced Fields

Field Type Description

dup_group string duplicate grouping

N - none

S - site

UHDV - user, host, display, vendor

if V, then V:<vendor_code>

project string value of LM_PROJECT

sw_version string version of software checking out the feature

linger int linger period, in secondsENH_IN only

ENH Records: Basic Usage Logging Token System Fields

Field Type Description

actual_feature string name of actual software feature used for token feature checked out

actual_feature_count integer number of licenses of the actual feature used

ENH Records: Basic Usage Logging, ENH_OUT & ENH_IN

• ENH_OUT– output during the pre-checkout callback– provides all additional information needed for a detailed OUT or DENIED

hh:mm:ss (daemon_name) ENH_OUT: “feature” user@host timestamp num_licenses session_handle “display” addr dup_group “project” “sw_version” “actual_feature” “actual_feature_count”

• ENH_IN– output during the pre-checkin callback– provides all additional information needed for a detailed IN, or detection of a

“lingered” checkout

hh:mm:ss (daemon_name) ENH_IN: “feature” user@host timestamp num_licenses session_handle “display” addr dup_group linger “project” “sw_version” “actual_feature” “actual_feature_count”

ENH Records: Log File Integrity

• ENH_SECURITY– indicates that log file security is being used– indicates which digest technique is being used– output during the enh_init() function

hh:mm:ss (daemon_name) ENH_SECURITY: “digest_method”

• ENH_DIGEST– provides data for post processing to ensure log file integrity– obfuscated with a vendor specific pass phrase– output whenever one of two conditions is met

• length of text in digest• number of records in digest

hh:mm:ss (daemon_name) ENH_DIGEST: “digest”

ENH Records: Other Records

• ENH_VERSION– mandatory– output during enh_init()– provides ENH Records specification version

hh:mm:ss (daemon_name) ENH_VERSION: version

• ENH_VENDOR– optional– provides some information for ISV specific post analysis– output whenever vendor chooses, ignored by License Tracker

hh:mm:ss (daemon_name) ENH_VENDOR: “name” “value”

What It Costs

• for ISVs– source code license -> $0– source code royalties -> $0– integration effort -> approx. ½ day– for ISVs using ENH records for pay-per-use licensing or for compliance

validation, a license for the License Tracker toolset is required

• for enterprise end users– for ENH daemon -> up to ISVs, likely $0– for License Tracker software

• no additional cost -> just another data source

“You can only optimize -what you understand…

…and you can only understand -what you track!”

www.licensetracker.ca