CN100449562C - A license control method and device - Google Patents

Abstract

The invention relates to a License control method that comprises applying for License approval to the application License customer end from the operation module of the application server, approval for the operation module with the License customer based on the acquired License data from License server, executing operation after operation module acquired approval from License customer end. It improves the timely effect of the License approval with reduced system loading and License approval reliability.

Description

A license control method and device

technical field

The present invention relates to the communication field, in particular to a license control method and device.

Background technique

With the popularity of personal computers and the emergence of a large number of programmers and software companies, software technology has been greatly developed. At the same time, software protection has been greatly challenged.

In the past, as long as users owned the software, they could run and use it, so software companies mainly controlled the use of software by controlling software copying and software distribution. At this time, many technical means to prevent software from being illegally copied appeared. The basic principle is usually to bundle the software with a specific hardware carrier, such as a floppy disk, a CD, etc., but this method is too dependent on the hardware, which limits the promotion of the software. sex.

With the rapid growth of software usage and the increasingly large scale of software, the dissemination of software begins to separate from the hardware carrier. At this time, the software can be installed locally and licensed to run. Software companies usually use advanced encryption technology to protect the software. The right to use, different software copies require different passwords to install and run, and the license at this time is equivalent to a key, which is used to open the corresponding software.

With the development of network technology, the software system architecture has become more and more complex. The emergence of distributed applications has made localized licenses ineffective. Many softwares are installed and run by servers. An example of the network is shown in Figure 1. shown. Busu's dedicated license server manages all licenses of users. The business modules are distributed on different application servers. Each business module directly accesses the license server and applies for license resources. The license server dynamically judges the remaining licenses and returns the license results , the business module determines the business process according to the license result.

An example of its method flow is shown in Figure 2:

S1: The business module receives the business request and applies for a license resource from the license server;

S2: The license server checks the current remaining license resources, and determines whether to issue license resources;

S3: If there are still license resources that can be issued, the license server performs license approval, deducts 1 from the license resource, and returns a response message of successful application to the business module;

S4: After receiving the license, the business module executes business operations.

In this solution, all the licenses of users are centrally managed by the license server, so that the dynamic distribution of licenses can be realized and the utilization rate of licenses can be improved.

However, this solution completely relies on the license server to manage and control the license. When the number of application servers is large and the business modules are busy, each license request of each business module needs to be applied to the license server, and the license server is heavily loaded. It will increase network traffic.

For business processes that require strict real-time license acquisition, such as voice conferencing services, the execution efficiency of business modules is largely limited by the operating efficiency of the license server because the business modules can only continue with the business process after receiving the results returned by the license server. As well as the network conditions between the application server and the license server, when the load on the license server and the network is heavy, the real-time performance of obtaining the license will be seriously affected.

If the license server's business volume is too large, the system fails and other reasons cause business congestion or even collapse, all business modules will stop running because they cannot obtain licenses. In addition, if the network between the application server and the license server is abnormal, it will also have a great impact on the business modules. Therefore, the tightly coupled architecture and method flow between the business modules and the license server will bring great operational risks to the license business and reduce the reliability of the system.

Contents of the invention

The present invention provides a license control method, device and system to solve the problems of heavy system load, poor real-time performance and poor reliability caused by centralized license management in the prior art.

The invention provides the following technical solutions:

A license control method, comprising steps:

A: The business module of the application server applies for a license from the license client of the application server;

B: The license client licenses the business module according to the license global data obtained from the license server. The license global data includes: the number of all licenses on the license server, the number of licenses in use and the number of remaining available licenses;

C: The business module executes business operations after obtaining the license from the license client.

in:

Before performing step A, the data initialization step of the license server is also included:

The license server reads the total number of licenses and obtains the number of licenses used by all license clients;

The license client suspends the provision of licenses to the business modules, and returns the number of licenses used to the license server;

The license server summarizes the number of licenses used by each license client, updates the global license data, and sends the updated license data to all license clients;

The license client updates locally available license data according to the updated license data, and resumes providing licenses to the service modules.

Before executing step A, the data initialization step of the application server is also included:

The license client clears the number of licenses used locally and sends a message to the license server;

The license server clears the license quantity used by the license client, updates the license global data, and sends the updated license data to all license clients;

The license client updates the local license data, and provides licenses to the business modules according to the updated data.

The steps for the License client to obtain the License data from the License server in Step B are as follows:

The license client regularly sends license incremental data to the license server, the license server updates the license global data according to the license incremental data, and sends the updated license data to all license clients, and the license client updates the local license data;

or,

The license client regularly sends the accumulated license quantity to the license server, and the license server updates the license global data according to the accumulated license quantity, and sends the updated license data to all license clients, and the license client updates the local License data.

The incremental data refers to the number of licenses newly occupied and released by a single license client within an update period.

The license permission includes:

Determine whether a new license can be applied for; or

Determine whether the license can be released; or

Determine whether business operations can be performed.

The total number of licenses issued by all license clients exceeds the total number of licenses issued by the license server.

The present invention also provides a License control device, the device comprising:

Business module, apply for a license from the license client, and perform business operations after obtaining the license;

The license client licenses the service modules according to the global license data obtained from the license server. The global license data includes: the number of all licenses on the license server, the number of licenses in use, and the number of remaining available licenses.

In the embodiment of the present invention, the license module of the license is directly deployed on the application server, and each application server has a separate license client responsible for the license license, so that the license work originally undertaken by the license server alone is decomposed to many The concurrent processing pressure of the application server and license server will be greatly relieved. At the same time, when the license client on the application server runs abnormally, the business module can also directly issue a license to the license server. This mechanism improves the operating efficiency of the system and effectively solves the performance bottleneck of the license server.

In the embodiment of the present invention, the application server no longer directly performs remote licensing to the License server, but licenses to the local License client. There is a loosely coupled relationship between the application server and the License server. Local calls are faster than remote calls. It saves the overhead of network transmission and message packet encoding and decoding; the efficiency and reliability of local calls are much greater than that of remote calls; in addition, the license client only needs to provide license services to a single application server, and the operating pressure is very small, so it can support more complex, More flexible licensee strategy; due to the distributed deployment and independent operation, the temporary failure of the license server will not immediately affect the business operation of the application server, and the abnormality of the network between the license server and the application server will not immediately affect the business operation. The reliability of the system is greatly enhanced.

In the embodiment of the present invention, what the license client obtains is the license resource refreshed last time. Before the next data acquisition, if the peak value of business concurrency is encountered, the total number of resources issued by multiple license clients may exceed the total license resource. The resource pool allows the business system to allow the actual number of issued licenses to temporarily exceed the total number of licenses owned by the service provider ASP when the business system encounters a large-scale concurrent business peak. It will not cause loss to the legitimate interests of the software owner.

Description of drawings

Fig. 1 is the networking example of the License control system of the prior art;

FIG. 2 is a license control method in the prior art;

Fig. 3 is the networking example of the License control system of the embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 4 is a flowchart of a license control method according to an embodiment of the present invention;

Fig. 5 is the initialization procedure of the License server of the embodiment of the present invention;

Fig. 6 is the initialization process of the application server of the embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 7 is a process of the license server obtaining data from the application server according to the embodiment of the present invention.

Detailed ways

In order to make the object, technical solution and advantages of the present invention clearer, the present invention will be further described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings and examples.

Please refer to Figure 3. The license server manages the entire license resource, synchronizes the license global data to all application servers when the system starts, and regularly sends the latest license data to the application servers according to the application server's request. Among them, the license global data mainly includes the number of all licenses on the license server, the number of licenses in use, and the number of remaining available licenses.

Each application server includes at least one License client and at least one business module. The service module requests a license from the license client of the application server at the local end, and performs business operations after obtaining permission from the license client. The license client licenses the service module according to the license data obtained from the license server, and sends a license response message to the service module. The license client also regularly sends the license data to the license server, and updates the local license data according to the response message from the license server. Wherein, the license data sent by the license client to the license server is license incremental data or license cumulative data, the incremental data refers to the number of licenses newly occupied and released by a single license client within a refresh cycle The data refers to the cumulative number of licenses occupied and released by a single application server since its startup.

According to the description in Figure 3, it can be seen that the data stored by the license server mainly includes the number of licenses used by each license client and the latest global license data. In the first embodiment, that is, when the license server and the license client exchange incremental data, the license client stores incremental data and locally available license data. In the second embodiment, that is, when the license server and the license client exchange the accumulated license quantity used, the license client stores the accumulated license quantity used and locally available license data. Correspondingly, the data stored in the license client mainly includes license incremental data or the accumulated number of licenses used, as well as the number of available licenses. The data in the License client can also be stored in other modules or devices.

Please refer to FIG. 4, which is a flowchart of a license control method in this embodiment, including the following steps:

A: The business module of the application server requests the license from the license client of the application server;

B: The license client licenses the business modules according to the license data obtained from the license server;

C: The business module performs business operations after obtaining the license from the license client.

Because the license server and license client have a distributed architecture, the running status and data stored in the two are not always synchronized. When the license server is started or restarted, the data on the license server needs to be initialized. Please refer to Figure 5, the data initialization steps of the License server are:

The license server reads the total number of licenses, and obtains the number of licenses used by the license clients of all application servers;

The license client suspends the provision of licenses to the business modules, and returns the number of licenses it uses to the license server;

The license server summarizes the number of licenses used by each application server, generates license global data, and provides updated license data to all license clients;

The license client updates the locally available license data and resumes providing licenses to the business modules.

The application server may terminate abnormally. After the application server terminates, the license server will consider that the license still occupies license resources. Therefore, when the application server starts or restarts, it needs to send a message to the license server to let the license server initialize the license data of the license client, that is, it needs to initialize the data of the application server. Please refer to Figure 6 for the initialization steps of the application server:

The license client clears the number of licenses used locally and sends a message to the license server;

The license server clears the number of licenses used by the license client, updates the license global data, and sends the updated license data to all license clients;

The license client updates the locally available license data, and provides licenses to the business modules according to the updated local license data.

Please refer to Figure 7, which is the steps for the application server to obtain license data from the license server:

The license client regularly reports its own license data to the license server;

The license server updates the license global data according to the reported license data, and sends updated license data to all license clients, wherein the updated license data includes at least available license data;

The license client updates the local license data.

In a specific embodiment, the license client regularly reports the incremental data or the accumulated number of used licenses to the license server. If the reported data is incremental data, the license client will clear the incremental data to zero when updating the local license data.

Optionally, the license client suspends provision of the license during the period from reporting the license data to updating the local license data.

The business module directly accesses the local license client to perform license licensing. There are three main licensing operations: judging whether the business can be performed or applying for a new license or releasing the license.

When applying for a new license, if the licensing operation is to apply for a new license, the license client will judge whether the remaining available licenses are sufficient according to the local license global data. If the license is not enough, the application for the business module will be rejected. The service module provides a license success response message, and reduces the number of available local license data by 1.

If the licensing operation is to release a license, add 1 to the number of locally available license data.

Obviously, those skilled in the art can make various changes and modifications to the present invention without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention. Thus, if these modifications and variations of the present invention fall within the scope of the claims of the present invention and equivalent technologies, the present invention also intends to include these modifications and variations.

Claims (11)

1. A License control method is characterized by comprising the following steps:

a: a business module of an application server applies for License permission to a License client of the application server;

b: the License client side carries out License permission on the business module according to License global data obtained from a License server, wherein the License global data comprises: the License server comprises the number of all licenses, the number of used licenses and the number of remaining available licenses;

c: and the business module executes business operation after obtaining the permission of the License client.

2. The method according to claim 1, further comprising a License server data initialization step before executing step a:

the License server reads the total number of the licenses and acquires the number of the licenses used by all License clients;

the License client suspends the permission provided for the business module and returns the used License number to the License server;

the License server collects the number of licenses used by each License client, updates License global data and sends the updated License data to all the License clients;

and the License client updates the locally available License data according to the updated License data and recovers to provide the permission for the service module.

3. The method according to claim 1, further comprising a data initialization step of the application server before performing step a:

the License client clears the number of locally used licenses and sends a message to a License server;

the License server clears the number of licenses used by the License clients, updates License global data and sends the updated License data to all the License clients;

and the License client updates local License data and provides permission for the business module according to the updated data.

4. The method according to any one of claims 1 to 3, wherein the step of the License client acquiring License data from the License server in the step B is specifically:

the License client sends License incremental data to a License server at regular time, the License server updates License global data according to the License incremental data and sends the updated License data to all the License clients, and the License clients update local License data;

or,

the License client sends the License number used accumulatively to the License server at regular time, the License server updates the License global data according to the License number used accumulatively, and sends the updated License data to all the License clients, and the License clients update the local License data.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the incremental data refers to new occupation and new released License number of a single License client in an update period.

6. The method of any of claims 1 to 3, wherein the License permission comprises:

judging whether a new License can be applied or not; or

Judging whether License can be released or not; or

It is determined whether a business operation can be performed.

7. The method of any of claims 1 to 3, wherein the total number of licenses issued by all License clients exceeds the total number of licenses of the License server.

8. A License control apparatus, characterized in that the apparatus comprises:

the business module applies License permission to the License client and executes business operation after the License is obtained;

the License client side performs License permission on the business module according to License global data acquired from a License server, wherein the License global data comprises: license server total License number, License number in use, and License number remaining available.

9. The device of claim 8, wherein the License client periodically sends License incremental data to the License server, and updates local License data according to the License server response; or the License client sends the quantity of the licenses used by the License client to the License server at regular time, and updates the local License data according to the response of the License server.

10. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein the incremental data refers to new occupation and new released License number of a single License client in an update period.

11. The apparatus according to any one of claims 8 to 10, wherein the total number of licenses issued by all License clients exceeds the total number of licenses of the License server.

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