Reason

Your ANLM (Alchemy Network License Manager) can be setup to serve more than one version of Alchemy CATALYST licenses and can be configured for users/groups to use a specific versions. You may restrict which license type (Developer/Pro, Localizer, Translator/Pro) a user or group can use, also known as a Feature.

 

Solution

Using the Options file (Alchemy.opt) you can control which feature and version a user or group can use.
The Options file is a plain text file which can be edited in any text editor such as Notepad.

There are 3 basic options available in order to restrict access to a feature: INCLUDE, EXCLUDE and RESERVE.

You can access the license file from the ANLM interface clicking on the Edit Options file button

Or access the file directly in the public folder:

C:\Users\Public\Alchemy Software\NLM\Alchemy.opt

If the file is not present, copy it from the install directory, by default: Program Files/Alchemy Software/NLM

Important: Once you have updated the Options file, you should click the Re-read license button.

 

Editing the Options file

General syntax:

OPTION num_lic feature[:keyword=value] type  {name | group_name}

Generally, you will use the options file to restrict the use of Features regardless of versions available.
With a feature name it is possible to specify a Version too. The feature name can be modified with an optional keyword-value pair to fully qualify it. This notation is used for distinguishing a particular group of licenses when there are multiple FEATURE lines for a single feature.

In the next 3 OPTIONS' descriptions (RESERVE, INCLUDE and EXCLUDE) we will use examples specifying Versions.

In order to check which versions are available for the same feature, check your license file (*.lic) in the Public directory.
For example, the license file contains the following information:

FEATURE DeveloperPro_ ALCHEMY 16.4 permanent 1 BORROW=336 SIGN="00DA \

8BB2 9AED C839 B6E9 015C DDDE AC00 3BC2 A519 4DE8 0E1C 7B29 \

A6C9 71B2"

FEATURE DeveloperPro_ ALCHEMY 15.4 permanent 3 BORROW=336 SIGN="009E F8D1 \

52FE 8992 8D17 7DBF C408 3100 8753 7736 02F6 ABDE 41E7 58FF \

BAF9"

[...]

The highlighted text above is the version for the each of the Developer/Pro licenses (or feature). The above has 1x Catalyst Developer/Pro 2025 license (version 16.4 in the license file) and 3x Catalyst Developer/Pro 2023 (version 15.4 in the license file).

 

RESERVE

If we wanted only user cyrilv to have access to one CATALYST Developer/Pro 2025 license, creating a RESERVE entry in the Options file for the example above would look like this:

RESERVE DeveloperPro_:VERSION=16.4 USER cyrilv

This will result in Reserving a CATALYST Developer/Pro 2025 license for user cyrilv. No one else will be able use this license at any time, it is Reserved.

 

INCLUDE

This option includes a user or pre-defined group of users in the list of who is allowed to use licenses for this feature. Anyone not in an INCLUDE statement is not allowed to use that feature. EXCLUDE supersedes INCLUDE; conflicts between the EXCLUDE list and the INCLUDE list are resolved by the EXCLUDE taking precedence.

Creating an INCLUDE entry in the options file in our example would look like this:

INCLUDE DeveloperPro_:VERSION=15.4 USER cyrilv
INCLUDE DeveloperPro_:VERSION=16.4 USER Johnb

The above options will allow user cyrilv to be able to get a Catalyst Developer/Pro 2023 license but not a Catalyst Developer/Pro 2025. While user johnb will not be able to get a Catalyst Developer/Pro 2023 license.

If you do not include at least one user (or group) for each version, the undefined version will automatically be available to all users.
For example:


INCLUDE DeveloperPro_:VERSION=15.4 USER cyrilv


This line on it's own means that user Johnb has access to Catalyst Developer/Pro 2023 and 2025 while user cyrilv has only access to Catalyst Developer/Pro 2023. To restrict user Johnb from using a Catalyst Developer/Pro 2025 license, a second line is necessary. If needed you can use a fake username.

 

EXCLUDE

Excludes a user or pre-defined group of users from the list of who is allowed to use the feature. EXCLUDE supersedes INCLUDE; conflicts between the EXCLUDE list and the INCLUDE list are resolved by the EXCLUDE taking precedence.

Creating an EXCLUDE entry in the options file in our example would look like this:

EXCLUDE DeveloperPro_:VERSION=16.4 USER cyrilv

This option would stop user cyrilv from using the Catalyst Developer/Pro 2025 license but can use any other available license.
 

Important Note: a Catalyst 2023 installation can use any license with a higher version number. Thus user cyrilv could use a Catalyst Developer/Pro 2025 license to run Catalyst 2023 client.

 

Using GROUP instead of USER

You can define groups to use in your restrictions. For example:

GROUP developers user1 user2 user3
GROUP localizers user4 user5 user6
GROUP translators user7 user8 user9

With the above, you could restrict users to use the appropriate license, like so:

INCLUDE DeveloperPro_ GROUP developers
INCLUDE Localizer_ GROUP localizers
INCLUDE Translator_ GROUP translators

With those options, Users 1 to 3 would have access to Developer/Pro licenses (irrespective of version) while users 4 to 9 would not. Users under the developers group would not have access to any other license type than Developer/Pro.

 

Products or Versions Affected

  • Alchemy Network License Manager 3.0