Clickonce and license question question

[moedman]

We have an application that we are using Clickonce to install on client
computers. Once the application is installed, the user runs the application
and is required to register the application with a license key that was
e-mailed to the user along with the ClickOnce link. The registration process
updates the SQL server at our ISP that the license key is now in use. We are
having problems with some of our corporate users who have strict firewalls.
They are unable to register the application and they get an SQL error. We
switched the registration so that it now uses a webservice instead of
directly linking to the SQL server but we are still having problems with some
corporate users / firewalls. I am wondering if there is a better way?

Basically, we want to limit each user to 1 installation per license key and
we want to document when the license key has been used. The application is
updated very often, so we also keep track of which version the users have
installed. The added problem is that everytime we have an update, the user
basically re-registers the application with the new version.

I would appreciate any suggestions that could make the process simpler for
both the users and our team.

Thanks,
John

 

[Udo Nesshoever]

moedman said:

We have an application that we are using Clickonce to install on client
computers. Once the application is installed, the user runs the application
and is required to register the application with a license key that was
e-mailed to the user along with the ClickOnce link. The registration process
updates the SQL server at our ISP that the license key is now in use. We are
having problems with some of our corporate users who have strict firewalls.
They are unable to register the application and they get an SQL error. We
switched the registration so that it now uses a webservice instead of
directly linking to the SQL server but we are still having problems with some
corporate users / firewalls. I am wondering if there is a better way?

Basically, we want to limit each user to 1 installation per license key and
we want to document when the license key has been used. The application is
updated very often, so we also keep track of which version the users have
installed. The added problem is that everytime we have an update, the user
basically re-registers the application with the new version.

I would appreciate any suggestions that could make the process simpler for
both the users and our team.

What about just meaking the company open their firewall for the server?
Then the client cann report directly to the server where the CO-Setup
is located and the server can communicate with your SQL server. This
way the client computers are still limited by the company's firewall
and the server could use a special firwall rule opening just the SQL or
webservice port just for your server. That's basically how we try to
meet all the security rules of our clients' systems.

Cheers,
Udo

 

[moedman]

Udo,

Thanks for your response.

I would like to keep our application as seemless as possible. Having them
configure their firewall for my application is too much of a hassle. My
application isn't really business critical. If they have to jump through too
many hoops to get it working, they will probably just not use / buy it. I
would prefer to change the way we license / register the application. We
think that the webservice might solve a lot of these problems, but I want to
be sure that there isn't a better way that we have overlooked.

Thanks,
John

 

[Udo Nesshoever]

Hi John,

I would like to keep our application as seemless as possible. Having them
configure their firewall for my application is too much of a hassle. My
application isn't really business critical. If they have to jump through too
many hoops to get it working, they will probably just not use / buy it. I
would prefer to change the way we license / register the application. We
think that the webservice might solve a lot of these problems, but I want to
be sure that there isn't a better way that we have overlooked.

Yeah, I understand that you want to reduce the hassle for the user.
That actually was exactely my intention. Just needing the server to
connect to your licensing services (instead of ALL clients needing to
have a connection) is a way to reduce this hassle.
Of course - if you consider changing your licensing system to an
offline mode - then any of these suggestions are obsolete.
But in case you want to keep the online verification, I'd rather reduce
it to one single connection point rather than requiring all clients to
be able to get a connection to the dangerous world out there

Cheers,
Udo