I want to jump in and ask a question on this specific to the example of the Overview Console, and the area I'm specifically most interested in is the customizable Home Page version of it, rather than the standalone Overview Console. You said,
"As BMC has uncovered areas where licenses were being obtained where we did not think it was appropriate (see the previous two examples), changes have been made in later releases to make sure that adjustments were made to not grab license tokens earlier than was intended." Can you specify what version of ITSM the behavior was changed in to not grab licenses from the Overview Console? Thanks, Shawn Pierson Remedy Developer | Energy Transfer -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:arslist@ARSLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of Mueller, Doug Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2012 2:33 PM To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: Re: When is a Floating Application License "Consumed" Claire, Remember, you asked..... Dave's response is correct at the top level. But there are subtle issues that are all in the mix and need to be considered. With AR System floating licenses, all forms in the environment are AR System forms. That means that access to any one of those forms in terms of a read, create, or write of data will obtain the license type that is assigned to the user. At the time of interaction with data, the system will obtain the license type. Until there is an access of data, the user is accessing the system with a read license. You can see a user in this state with a license of Read (Floating) for example. The Read is the type they are holding the (Floating) is the type they will try and move to whenever there is data access. Note that this will also show if you are OUT of floating tokens so the user is currently in the system with Read access but is waiting for an available token to show up. Now, there are a few select operations to the system where we will not grab a token. For example, the lookup of your User Preference record because the system does that at startup to get you going and it is not data you have selected to read. However, if you open a console or form or something that displays data, even though you did not do the read, they were done on your behalf so that triggers the obtaining of a token as you have started interacting with data. Remember, you DO NOT have to do an update or create to obtain your license. Any data access will obtain the license which you have been configured to use. So, pretty straight-forward, only one little minor qualification for a few system forms like the User Preference form. Now, we get to application licenses. Application licenses do not apply to all forms in the system, but only forms that are within the specific application that is licensed. In addition, it is not to all forms that are part of a particular application. An application specifies which forms with that application are licensed forms and which are not. You can see which forms within an application are licensed by looking at the application definition (I don't know if this data is visible through DevStudio or you would have to go to the API level to be able to see this list). Whenever you access any data -- read, create, or write -- on any form within the application that is licensed that is a licensed form, you will obtain a license of the type you are assigned. Until then, you will not obtain a license. Why do applications have licensed and unlicensed forms? So that you only obtain the application license when working with the application not when you happen to hit some shared form across applications or some auxillary form not considered a key data form for the application. So, a bit more complex, but really the same rules. The only issue here is whether the form in question is part of the application and if so, is it licensed within the application. Remember, it is the form data is being accessed FROM not the form that you are ON that is the key form. So, on the consoles, if you have tables accessing data it is all the different sources of the table field data that are in question here not the console itself. Now, with this as background information, we are back to your question. You are on a console that is querying other forms to pull data back to give you a list of things. You query a Change form. You query an Incident form. The forms queried are the main Change and Incident forms. Those are each part of their respective applications and each are licensed forms within those applications. This means that you will be obtaining your assigned Incident and Change licenses when you open the console as you are interacting with key forms on each of those applications. You will obtain those when you open the console (if you don't already have them). This should explain what is happening for your situation. I will close with a couple of observations. I will need you to follow along with the flow and I will let you reach your own conclusions. I have not and will not in this message make a statement or promise that anything will be any different tomorrow than it is today. The rules of licensing and when licenses are obtained ARE NOT changing. But.... There was a time when there were NO exception forms for the AR System so that any opening of the client of any kind even if no data was queried would grab a token because there were some background forms -- like User Preference -- accessed by the client itself at startup. You will find today that if you start a client and go to a form that does not query data or load a table field that you do not grab a license until you do access data There was a time when ALL forms within an application were licensed to that application. So, any access of any form within the application would grab an application license as assigned. You will find today that there is a subset of forms within the application that are licensed to the application. Forms that are not will not obtain an application license when accessed. Only forms that are licensed to the application will grab the application license (they still grab AR System license just not application for the ones not licensed to the application) The plan for licensing of an overview console where we bring together data from many different forms across multiple applications is not to force the user to suddenly grab tokens from many different applications just for getting a global list. This happens because the system queries the main data tables of each of the applications. As BMC has uncovered areas where licenses were being obtained where we did not think it was appropriate (see the previous two examples), changes have been made in later releases to make sure that adjustments were made to not grab license tokens earlier than was intended. I suspect that this trend will continue. It is recognized by BMC that obtaining licenses from many applications when accessing an Overview Console we provide just to get a consolidated list of items across the applications may not be the desired behavior of the system. I hope this note has helped to clarify when licenses are obtained -- both AR System and application. Doug Mueller Private and confidential as detailed here: http://www.sug.com/disclaimers/default.htm#Mail . If you cannot access the link, please e-mail sender. _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org attend wwrug12 www.wwrug12.com ARSList: "Where the Answers Are"
