Control licensing

[Ray Cassick \(Home\)]

After countless hours of complete frustration I am asking for someone here
to point me to a (working) example of how to license a class library. All I
want to do is create a design time license for a few component libraries and
am finding out that this seems to be one of the darkest areas of VB.NET that
no one can give a good example of how it works from start to finish.

I understand the basics of how it is supposed to work and it all makes sense
but I have yet to actually see an example that WORKS anywhere. All I seem to
find is tons of message posted by people that seem to be as far to the end
of theirs ropes and I am on the subject.

I even downloaded an example from the gotdotnet web site:

http://windowsforms.net/articles/Licensing.aspx

....and the examples don't work. The host application STILL throws an
exception when trying to use the licensed component at runtime.

Pat of what I cannot believe is that it seems that most of the WORK
(creation of license files and addition of the license to the host project)
needs to be done by hand for components that are non-visual in nature (i.e.:
class libraries). Jeeeze, V1.1 of the framework and we are still doing
things
by hand.

Is there ANY WORKING example of doing this in VB.NET 2003 anywhere? I am not
even trying to build a custom license provider yet. I just want to see the
basic thing work first before I start trying to mess around with encrypting
my lic files and all that.

 

[Michael Gray]

After countless hours of complete frustration I am asking for someone here
to point me to a (working) example of how to license a class library. All I
want to do is create a design time license for a few component libraries and
am finding out that this seems to be one of the darkest areas of VB.NET that
no one can give a good example of how it works from start to finish.

I understand the basics of how it is supposed to work and it all makes sense
but I have yet to actually see an example that WORKS anywhere. All I seem to
find is tons of message posted by people that seem to be as far to the end
of theirs ropes and I am on the subject.

I even downloaded an example from the gotdotnet web site:

http://windowsforms.net/articles/Licensing.aspx

...and the examples don't work. The host application STILL throws an
exception when trying to use the licensed component at runtime.

Pat of what I cannot believe is that it seems that most of the WORK
(creation of license files and addition of the license to the host project)
needs to be done by hand for components that are non-visual in nature (i.e.:
class libraries). Jeeeze, V1.1 of the framework and we are still doing
things
by hand.

Is there ANY WORKING example of doing this in VB.NET 2003 anywhere? I am not
even trying to build a custom license provider yet. I just want to see the
basic thing work first before I start trying to mess around with encrypting
my lic files and all that.

There is a section explaining all this (and more), in "Programming
Microsoft Visual Basic.NET" Version 20003 by Francesco Balena.
Microsoft Press. ISBN 0-7356-2059-8

You won't regret buying it, as it demystifies many other areas where
the on-line documentation is "unhelpfull", to put it mildly.

 

[Ray Cassick \(Home\)]

I just ordered it...

If it can explain this it will be my Bible.