Most Rational products will require either a license key or an activation kit in order to use them. This will require you to perform additional steps with the Rational tools that you may not have to do with other IBM software products.
Please follow this process for downloading, installing and using Rational products.
Step-by-step process for Academic Initiative members
Step 1: Determine if the product you want to use needs a key or activation kit
To determine if the product you want to use requires a license key or activation kit, view the list of Rational products by license type and locate the product in question.
- If the product you want to use requires an activation kit, proceed to Step 2.
- If the product you want to use needs a license key and not an activation kit, proceed to Step 3.
Step 2: Download the activation kits
By default, all products that use activation kits will run for 30 days from the date of installation, except for Rational Application Developer, which will run for 60 days. To get the product to run past the initial period, you need to download the product's activation kit from the Software Catalog where you download the product itself.
NOTE: We highly recommend downloading the activation kit when you download the product, since you will need both components.
After you have downloaded the activation kit, run the Install Manager and import the kit. This will configure the product to run perpetually.
Step 3: Get your license key
If the product you want to use requires a license key and not an activation kit:
- Request access to the Rational License Key Center. This is the site where you will go to get your license key.
To request access, log into ibm.com and then complete the
Account Request Form. Within 1-3 days after submitting the form, you will receive an email from
rational-license-keys@subscribenet.com welcoming you to the Rational License Key Center.
The Welcome email will include your password for logging into the Rational License Key Center.
- Follow the instructions in the Welcome email to log into the
Rational License Key Center using your email address
and the password provided in the mail.
- Follow the instructions for either Telelogic or Rational products:
- For Telelogic products: Follow the steps in
Accessing Telelogic keys in the Rational License Key Center (PDF, 90KB).
- For Rational products: After you have logged into the Rational License Key Center, you will be presented with a list of product license keys that you can generate. Select the license key corresponding to the product you want to use, and then follow the prompts to generate the key. Please note that each Rational tool requires a separate license key. Therefore, if you want to use multiple products you will need to go through the license key generation process multiple times, once for each product.
- For Telelogic products: Follow the steps in
Accessing Telelogic keys in the Rational License Key Center (PDF, 90KB).
Additional notes
- During the license key generation process, you will be asked to enter the hostname and the hostid of your computer. These unique identifiers are built into the license keys and allow them to run only on your computer. On the page where the Rational License Key Center asks you for the host information, you can select the hostname and hostid hyperlinks, which will launch a pop-up help window.
- If you are using a Windows system, you can download get_host_info.exe (200KB), which is a small tool that will display your hostname and hostid so you can copy/paste those values into the Rational License Key Center form.
- Review this information to ensure you generate the key properly.
- After you have generated your license keys, the Rational License Key Center will display the license key installation instructions. Remember that you install Authorized User keys on the machines where you are going to run the Rational product and you install floating keys on the license server machine.