Notes from Rational Support

License Usage Order

IBM Rational products requests licenses in a specific order. In an organization we may have combination of authorized user, floating, suite, point-product licenses in the environment, it is essential that we understand the license usage order.

Now let’s try to understand the license usage order. An IBM Rational product that users IBM Rational Common Licensing will request the license in the following order.

1. Authorized user license before floating license. 
   An IBM Rational product will request for an authorized user license before a floating license regardless of whether it is a floating license or point-product license.
2. Point-product license before a Suite license.
   For example: IBM Rational Purify is sold as a standalone product and as a part of Rational Suite. Among the group of authorized user license and floating license, Purify will first request a Purify license, and then request various Rational Suite licenses in specific order.
3. Suite license of the last Rational Suite installed.

For version 7.0 of IBM Rational products, the license key usage order has changed. In releases before 7.0, when a Suite product was being installed, the Rational License Key Administrator (LKAD) application would first try to find a license key corresponding to the Suite. If the Suite key was not available, LKAD would then look for a key corresponding to the product that was running.

You can use the License Usage Mapper in LKAD to change the release 7.0 license usage order or have the application not search for any or all Suite keys.

The table below describes the license usage order for each IBM Rational Product that uses IBM Rational Common Licensing.

Now let’s check how to change the license usage order. Any changes made in the license usage order can be reversed to previous setting by clicking the "Restore to Defaults" in the license usage mapping window.

To change the license usage order:

1. Launch IBM Rational License Key Administrator.
2. From the menu bar, click on Setting -> License Usage Mapper.
3. In the License Usage Mapper Window make sure that correct product is selected in the "Installed Products". The check boxes that are selected indicates which licenses the license server can check out for the selected product In "License Usage Order".
4. The order of license usage can be changed by clicking on the Up and Down buttons. Ensure the check boxes next to these licenses are selected.
5. Click OK.

The license usage order that you set on your computer is tied to your user ID. If different users log in to your computer with their own user IDs, the license usage order that you may have changed resets to the default order. The new users can set the license usage order for their user IDs. Their settings do not affect your settings.