Peter Cooper wrote:

>I recently came across this - very small no of users on an internal
>intranet with csp.
>typically they log on and stay on all day - 8 hour session timeout
>
>Buy exactly the license count that matches the number of users

If you don't require #server functionality, I'd personally set the
timeout to an absolute minimum, and save the session data somewhere
safe on session timeout (stored with the session ID). You can then
automatically log the user back on if a timed-out session reappears
(restoring the session data to %session). This could prevent a lot of
licensing issues, and doesn't require too much code. (This doesn't
work if you need #server, because AFAIK you can't automatically
re-create a timed-out session from a #server call.)

This of course does, in itself, nothing to help when a browser crash
occurs or a new browser is opened, but the small timeout limits
license exhaustion. Worst case scenario they'd have to wait five to
ten minutes before their license is deallocated.

>make the logon-screen a non-csp app (asp,perl whetever), the
>username/pasword is checked via a Cache Factory or ODBC stored
>procedure call

Wouldn't the factory and the ODBC connections require a license as
well? If so, this still doesn't help.

In the situation you describe, you can also do some trickery by
sharing a single license among more than one user [1], to make sure
you keep one free for the login process. This way, you can have 8
users online and still keep room for a ninth user (that actually is
one of those eight) to log on.

[1] This may sound like a breach of license terms, but it isn't. ISC
doesn't provide for situations as you describe. You only have eight
users, yet you can't give the users the twelve connections each they
are entitled to, because you can't, AFAIK, have a license-free
"identify yourself please" login screen. Note that having a way to
login license-free would also prevent the other problem you described,
a DOS attack.

Gertjan.

-- 
Gertjan Klein

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