Protection PLUS 5 .NET Edition
- New! Includes Instant PLUS 3.2.0.1.
- New! PLUSManagedGui has graduated to Released status, and is no longer in beta.
- New! Added sample showing how to use network floating semaphores with PLUSManagedGui.
- The Samples directory structure has been updated to use a similar structure used with the new PLUSNative samples. The sample Visual Studio solution files have been updated to reflect this new directory structure as well.
- Fixed an issue where the VirtualMachineValidation class could incorrectly identify a Microsoft Surface tablet as a virtual machine.
New! Protection PLUS 5 Native Edition Beta
The new PLUSNative library provides an extensive, flexible, and well-refined API that offers the latest-generation licensing technologies from the SoftwareKey System. This library is interoperable with license files created and used by PLUSManaged and SOLO Server, and is supported on a wide variety of platforms and architectures. For our customers more familiar with Protection PLUS 4, PLUSNative library is a punctuated evolution from previous-generation libraries such as KeyLib and SKCL.
Some experienced developers who see the "Beta" label affixed to a software product are reflexively prone to summarily dismiss it as an unproven commodity. In the case of PLUSNative Beta, however, we believe that would be a wildly premature miscalculation. While the widespread availability of PLUSNative Beta is indeed new, the simple fact of the matter is that over the past year, PLUSNative Beta has been successfully implemented within the production (yes, production!) environments of several of our top-tier corporate customers. We judiciously chose to apply the "Beta" tag because we eagerly anticipate adding many new features and enhancements (without, of course, sacrificing full backwards-compatibility) as PLUSNative continues to evolve as our most dynamic next-generation technology and ultimately pivotal component of the SoftwareKey Licensing System!
Here are some highlights about the new library:
- 32 bit (x86) and 64 bit (x64) versions are available for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Refer to the system requirements for additional details on platforms and environments supported.
- A variety of sample applications are included for many popular programming languages and frameworks, including:
- Eclipse C++ (CDT) project using wxWidgets (Mac OS X and Linux).
- Visual C++ (Visual Studio 2005 and later) using wxWidgets (Windows).
- RAD Studio XE2 project using Delphi and Firemonkey. (Windows and Mac OS X).
- Visual Basic 6.0 project (Windows).
- XCode project using Objective C and Cocoa (Mac OS X).
- PLUSNative uses several open source libraries which are well-known and trusted, including libcurl, libxml2, and OpenSSL. Refer to the third-party licenses to review the licenses for these dependencies.
Updates since the Protection PLUS 5 Native Developer Preview
For those who have been using the PLUSNative Developer Preview, here is a list of changes that have been made since the previous release.
- New! All third-party dependencies have been upgraded. (OpenSSL 1.0.1e, libcurl 7.30.0, libxml2 2.9.0)
- New! SK_HttpConnectionTest function has been added to PLUSNative, which makes it easier to verify Internet connectivity by making a test HTTP request and verifying the response contains expected content.
- New! SK_DateTimeValidateApi function has been added, which makes it much easier to prevent third-party utilities (which essentially "hack" the operating system APIs) from being used to compromise your evaluation/trial periods.
- New! SK_PLUS_SystemIdentifierAlgorithmAddNics has been updated to support both IPv4 and IPv6 adapters. After upgrading your library, this could result in some additional identifiers showing up on some systems.
- The SK_HttpRequest function's url parameter must begin with the server's host name, and may not begin with http:// or https://. This function now validates the value passed in through the url parameter to make sure it is not prefixed with the protocol.
- A variety of new sample applications (including new, Objective C and Visual Basic 6 samples) have been added, and prior samples have undergone a variety of fixes and enhancements.