ADASH DDS tutorial 11 - Licensing guide

In this video I would like to tell you something about DDS licensing and dongle keys.

So, what is the license?

Basically, license is a tool, which gives you an authorization to use licensed software In this case – DDS.

License itself consists of two parts.

The first part is license file.

The second part is dongle key. For full version and appropriate function of software you need both of them. Otherwise, DDS runs in limited free version. As mentioned, the first part needed is license file. You have got it from Adash. It contains information what kind of license for software you have. It is file with .lic extension. You import it into DDS. The second part of license is a dongle key. Now you can ask – What is the dongle key and what is it used for? Let’s explain it.

Dongle key, or you may also know it as hasp key, is basically the hardware key to which license file is related. It is used for license verification.

We offer two types of these keys - local dongle and net dongle. What is the difference?

DDS runs in limited free version without license file or dongle key. Let’s explain how local dongle works. Local dongle is used for one computer at the same time. It enables to run only one license.

We need to connect dongle key. In this moment we also need to import license file into DDS. Now the license is completed.

DDS is running in full version. Keep in mind that dongle key needs to be connected all the time when you are working with DDS. When you disconnect it from PC, license will not be complete and you won’t be able to use licensed version.

On the other hand, we have net dongle. This is working differently. Net dongle contains more licenses at the same time. It means, you have one net dongle key connected and more PCs. Let me show you how it works on following example.

We have local network with 10 computers. We have got ONE net dongle with FIVE licenses.

We connect net dongle to one computer in our network. As it is stated in dongle name – it is net key, so it is enough to connect one net dongle to one computer in the same ethernet network. Other computers can reach this dongle key through this network.

As mentioned in beginning, our net dongle contains 5 licenses. It means that in this moment, five clients can use licensed version of software.

But let’s imagine this situation. We have one more user who would like to use licensed software version now.

He opens DDS and he can run only free version. Why is that? He has license file and net dongle is connected in this network. Answer is quite simple. We have net dongle key with 5 licenses. It means, more than 5 licenses cannot be running in the same time. But let’s see that situation has changed. We have a client here, and after some time he has finished his job for today. He does not need to work with software anymore. So, he closes it.

Now the next client can use DDS full version.

And that’s it! Simply this is how net dongle works.