Most of our customers leverage the powerful automation capabilities of our central licensing server/service, SOLO Server, which includes Electronic License Activation and Management features such as:
License Manager only supports 1024-bit Encryption Keys for all encryption. To take advantage of the larger 4096-bit Encryption Keys, SOLO Server Automation is required.
For those customers wanting to process everything manually, License Manager is a desktop GUI application allowing you to activate, open, view, create, edit, and save Protection PLUS 5 SDK license files without requiring SOLO Server.
If you haven't activated with a Protection PLUS 5 SDK license, License Manager will start up as a 30 day evaluation, which can be accessed by pressing "Next" with "Evaluate" selected on the following License Management dialog.
License Manager is similar to LFEdit from Protection PLUS 4 SDK, but presently does not have an equivalent to product definitions. Along with editing license files, it will let you process manual activation requests or trigger code activations without the customer needing to connect to SOLO Server. Below is a screen-shot of License Manager.
The toolbar buttons from left to right are New, Open, Save, Undo, Redo, Cut, Copy, Paste. You can always hover over the buttons to get a tool-tip if you are ever unsure of what they do.
Protection PLUS 5 SDK license files are XML documents that have been encrypted and digitally signed to secure the contents and prevent unauthorized modification. The envelope contains the encryption keys needed to handle license file encryption and decryption. The envelope format helps secure these keys, and it is important for you to make a reasonable effort to secure/hide the envelope in your application so it cannot easily be found by examining the application or its memory.
Read-only license files are files which must be encrypted and signed by License Manager or SOLO Server. The advantage to these license files is that they are digitally signed with key data that is only partially known to your application. The drawback is that when using License Manager, you must manually generate the license file and there is no tracking in a database like there is with SOLO Server. To use SOLO Server, the drawback is that you will need Internet connectivity, but your protected application will not necessarily require Internet connectivity.
License Manager will also work with writable license files, which are license files that are encrypted and signed by your application.
License Manager's envelope has private key data for the server key, which is needed to create read-only license files. If you distribute this key with your application, you basically make all license files writable, which is less secure.
The protected application envelope will be added into your application's source code.
The AuthorEncryptionKey (usually configured in the LicenseConfiguration.EncryptionKey property in the Protection PLUS 5 SDK sample projects) contains the sample Envelope Key and Envelope for protected applications. This corresponds with the default License Manager envelope key and envelope in License Manager's Tools / Options dialog.
For your own applications, you will need to change these to your own envelope values, both in your source code and License Manager.
Open a support ticket with us and make a request for "Protection PLUS 5 SDK Encryption Key Data". License Manager's envelope must never be shipped in or with your protected applications, and must only be used in License Manager. We recommend making a secure backup of your envelope data, as we do not keep our customers' encryption envelopes on file. We can generate a new encryption envelope if necessary, but it would not match up to the applications deployed with the other encryption envelope data.
If you are not using SOLO Server, we will also include the "Protected Application Encryption Key Data" at the same time. If you are using SOLO Server, we will generate the License Manager Envelope that matches your SOLO Server account.
Envelopes for License Manager are not the same as envelopes distributed with protected applications! Do NOT include the License Manager envelope in or with your protected applications. In your protected applications, only use the protected application envelope, which we can send you through a support ticket or it can be generated by SOLO Server (Configure / Products then use the Actions dropdown and choose View Encryption Key Data).
If you are using your own SOLO Server account, you can get the envelope key and envelope by choosing the menu Configure / Products then use the Actions dropdown and choose View Encryption Key Data. If you are not using SOLO Server, open a support ticket with us and make a request for "Protection PLUS 5 SDK Encryption Key Data". This will include both the License Manager envelope (see above) and protected application envelope.