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Updated Wiki: Home

wavetech — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:18:27 GMT

Scutex

Scutex, pronounced (sec-u-techs), is a 100% managed .Net Framework licensing platform for your applications. Scutex is a flexible licensing system allowing multiple licensing schemes allowing you the most control over how you licensing your products. Unlike any other licensing system on the market, Scutex provides 4 distinct licensing schemes, allowing you to protect your products at different levels using completely different licensing schemes, key types and protection systems.

Using Scutex you can create trial versions of your software products and allow your users to buy and use license keys or keyfiles to unlock your product. You can also have edition based licensing to unlock only select features based on the level of the license. Scutex supports upgrade licenses as well as allowing your customers who have an existing version of your product to upgrade to a new version.

Scutex uses WCF web services to validate and manage keys, but also supports an offline mode for less secure scenarios. Scutex is written in C# and WPF and currently supports licensing of desktop applications, controls, components and licensing via COM.

Source code for Scutex is managed at GitHub https://github.com/wavetech/Scutex. Official builds will be posted here for download and will also be available on our website.

License

Licensed under the Microsoft Public License (MS-PL)

Resources

WaveTech's Home page: http://www.wtdt.com
Scutex's Home Page: http://www.wtdt.com/Products/Scutex.aspx
Discussion list: http://groups.google.com/group/scutex-dev
GitHub Source Code: https://github.com/wavetech/Scutex

Official Builds & Releases

There are a number of additional processes that occur for preparing Scutex to be used in your applications. You can obtain offical builds on our CodePlex site (http://scutex.codeplex.com) and the Scutex homepage at http://www.wtdt.com/Products/Scutex.aspx and click on the Downloads link. If you want to secure Scutex using your own protection systems or products feel free to just use the codebase, official builds are provided for convince.

Prerequisites

You will need the .Net Framework 4 and SQL Server or SQL Express to use Scutex. To develop Scutex you will need the following installed.

Visual Studio 2010 (WPF/MSTest)
SQL Server 2005/2008/2008 R2 or SQL Express 2005/2008 R2
Microsoft MOLES & Pex Power Tools
Infragistics WPF v10.3 (Temporary)
IIS, IIS Express or Casini for testing Services

Unit Testing

I moved the unit tests from NUnit to MSTest to get integrated MOLES support, and to play around with Pex a little. Unfortunately the way MSTest plays and moves things around it makes getting the paths for required files a major issue. The ReSharper Unit Test Runner does not have that issue, and still runes the MOLES tests. If you run the unit tests from within Visual Studio using MSTest all the test dependent on location will fail. Additionally the performance of the unit tests went downhill due to how MSTest wires things up. Eventually I'll get back in there are refactor the Setup and Teardowns so that they work with MSTest.

Supported License Key Types

There are two license key types supported:

Small Static License Key (SSK) XXX-XXXXXX-XXXX
Large Static License Key (LSK) XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX

The small static key only supports basic license key functionality, while the large static key supports many licensing scenarios.

Updated Wiki: Documentation

wavetech — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:44:03 GMT

Creating a New Licensing Project

Step 1

First supply the Licensing Project name and which product this licensing project will be working on against. If you don't have any Products added to your system you can click the Add button next to the Products drop down box or select the Products menu item from the main menu. The Basic Settings page allows you to set the general/common data of your licensing project.

Step 2

Click on the License Settings tab on the left hand side of the Scutex Licensing Manager window. In this page you can select the type of license key that your licensing project will use. Some version of Scutex are limited in the types of license keys that can be used. Once you have selected a License Key Type you need to create at least one License Set. Supply the name for the license set and the Verification Types that are valid. If you select the Multi User verification type you need to supply the Max Multi Users value.

Step 3

Next click on the Trial Settings tab on the left hand side. This tab controls how your trial software is limited and how the trial information will be presented to the user. The standard Trial Notification Type is Form, which is a standard trial window that is seen on most trial software. But there are a number of other options available for certain versions of the Scutex software. Below the Trial Notification Type option there is a tab control which will allow you to set the specific features of the notification type you selected. The Trial Expiration Options settings are the primary limiter for your trial software, most commonly you can limit your trial for n number of days from it's first run, i.e. 15 or 30 days.

You can place additional limitations on your trial software through the bottom "Trial Limitation" options. These are 'in addition to' your trial expiration options and allow you control how your trial software is used.

Step 4

You should validate your licensing project to ensure there are no major issues with your configuration or options.

You can now save your licensing project. Your next steps are to create a New Service, generate Software Code and Generate Keys.

Key Generation

Once you have setup your product and licensing project your next step is to generate license keys that can be disturbed to your customers to license your product. Clicking on the Generate Keys button in the Project menu group will allow you to start this process.

Step 1

You will need to select a license set you want to generate keys for. Keys are locked to a license set inside a licensing project. This allows you lock features or editions down to the license set level. You can only generate keys for one type per run, so you need to select one key type that is valid for your selected license set. Supply the the number of keys you wish to generate, remember to keep your license key batches batches small. Click the Generate Keys button to begin the process.

Step 2

You can review the keys that you generated in the list box in the License Keys group. When your satisfied click the Save and Export Keys button to save the license keys to your local database and create an export file.

The keys can be copied from this file and uploaded to your payment provider that can issue license keys.

Notes

If your using the web service to key authentication and authorization you must upload the license keys to your service. See the Product and Key Upload section under the Services folder to more information.

Integration With Your Code

Once you've created your licensing project, generated keys and setup your activation service you need to integrate Scutex into your code base. With your licensing project open inside the Licensing Manager click the Software Code menu button in the Project group.

Next you will copy the code inside the Attribute text box and copy it into your project that will execute the licensing code. Normally you can paste this data into the AsemblyInfo file.

You will need to define an assembly attribute in your code, most commonly in your AssemblyInfo file.

[assembly: License("xxx","xxx")]

Clicking the "Get Data File" button will open a save file dialog that will allow you to save the sxu.dll file to the directory of your solution. The sxu.dll is a resource that should be set to copy always when your project builds and not be embedded. The file needs to be deployed with the rest of your project files so ensure that any installer software (like InstallAware or InstallShield) have the file in their configuration.

You will need the following using statements.

using WaveTech.Scutex.Licensing;
using WaveTech.Scutex.Model;

The next two lines of code will create a new LicensingMananger and validate your trial and/or licensed software.

LicensingManager licensingManager = new LicensingManager(null);
ScutexLicense license = licensingManager.Validate();

After which you can access a number of properties from the ScutexLicense object that gets returned to get a lot of data about the trial or the license that was applied to it. But at a minimum the above is all you need to do to integrate Scutex into your application. If validation fails or the user doesn't accept the trial the application will hard exit.

Service QuickStart

Please ensure that you meet the Requirements for deploying the Scutex Client and Management services.

Step 1

First you need to create the instance of the service in your Scutex Manager, click on the New Service menu button under the Services tab to open the New Service Window.

Step 2

Creating a New Service is a multi stage process that can be controlled from the New Service window. First you need to provide the name of your service that will be used inside the Scutex Manager. Next you will need to supply the Url's for both the Client and Management services. These needs to be complete Urls prefixed with http:// or https:// and ending with a trailing /.

Step 3

Once you have supplied the information you need to download the service deployment package. Click the "Download Service Deployment Package" and save the resulting zip file. You can then save the service. Once the service is successfully saved you should see the Name and some other information on the grid in the Initialize Service group.

Step 4

You will need to upload the contents of the deployment zip file to your hosting provide or web server. The ClientService and ManagementService contain the WCF service folders that need to be uploaded. Once the folders have been uploaded ensure that the Client Service and Management Service

You will also need to create a database in your database server or at your hosting provider. Once your database is created run the ScutexService-CreateDb.sql script against your new database.

You may need to update the connection string in the Web.Config of the ClientService and ManagementService folders to point to the correct location of where you database is located. Between the """, leaving them intact, update the Data Srouce, Initial Catalog and Integrated Security sections. Update Data Source to the database server address and Initial Catalog to the name of the database you created.

Example connection string using Windows security

Data Source=mydbserver;Initial Catalog=ScutexService;Integrated Security=True;MultipleActiveResultSets=True

Example connection string using SQL security

Data Source=mydbserver;Initial Catalog=ScutexService;User Id=myUsername;Password=myPassword;MultipleActiveResultSets=True

Step 5

Once your web.config's have been updated and you have uploaded both the service files to the web server and created the back end database your ready to initialize the service. Back in the New Service window select the service from the grid and click the Initialize Server button. Once it's complete your ready to use the service in your licensing projects.

Notes

If the Initialize Service process fails you should run though this checklist.

Do the Urls work and can you reach them through the web browser
Are my database settings in the web.config correct
Does the account (Windows or SQL) have the dbo right in the service database and login rights to the server
Is .Net 4 setup correctly in the web server and IIS
Are WCF services enabled on the IIS server
Is there an application pool using the .Net 4 Framework created and running
Has the folders that the Client and Management server been converted to applications in IIS

Updated Wiki: Documentation

wavetech — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:41:51 GMT

Creating a New Licensing Project

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

You should validate your licensing project to ensure there are no major issues with your configuration or options.

You can now save your licensing project. Your next steps are to create a New Service, generate Software Code and Generate Keys.

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wavetech — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:36:12 GMT

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