Hi guys,



In my quest for Licensing Manager solutions I came across this product:



Quick License Manager from Interactive Studios Inc.



I will start testing it this week and would like know if anybody have used this product?

Edhy Rijo

I have not used this but it looks like something I'm interested in for sure.  It is definitely inexpensive compared to some of the other ones I've looked at.

There appears to be some overlap with the AppLife Updates product at least in terms of checking for updates.... 

Thanks for the information.

Russ Brown (Using C#2010/SQL Server 2008)

I sent them an email yesterday asking a bunch of questions about their products and have not received any response yet.



I have not dig into this product yet, even though I installed and yes it looks pretty good, don't know all details about the .NET integration or the check for updates, but so far I am having good time with AppLife Update.

Edhy Rijo

I will almost certainly buy AppLife Update once my trial expires next month and before their special offer expires for Strataframe users.

I'm going to check out QLM this weekend too.

By the way, what do you use for a .NET obfuscator?  Have you standardized on something already?  I've looked at about half a dozen ranging all over the place it price.  I'm having a tough time deciding what I will use in this category too there seems to be so many good choices.

Russ Brown (Using C#2010/SQL Server 2008)

I have DeepSea Obfuscator 2009 but still I have not been able to make it work with SF, I get all kind of error while trying, it is next on my list to make it work after the Licensing Manager stuff.

Edhy Rijo

I'm probably going to go with Smart Assembly but I haven't yet tested it with SF either!

www.smartassembly.com

Russ Brown (Using C#2010/SQL Server 2008)

Humm, looks pretty good. Thanks Russell.

Edhy Rijo

I've used Xenocode (http://www.xenocode.com/) to obfuscate my code. It worked OK. A couple of things about obfuscation and SF. As long as you have pretty granular control over what gets obfuscated, any of them will work. However, there are a lot of gotchas when obfuscating SF code. The primary concept to remember is that SF serializes a bunch of stuff as strings to designer. Things like the name of BOs, the names of methods, the names of enums, etc.



Because of this you need to make sure you don't obfuscate BOs (the class names at least) and don't obfuscate any methods used as fill methods with listviews or listboxes or combos. Also, don't obfuscate enums names or values.



Thus, it is very doable, but there is some pain and make sure you test the obfuscated version. BTW, I was doing this with ClickOnce...that was fun!

By the way, Redgate just acquired Smart Assembly on September 1st.

http://www.red-gate.com/

Russ Brown (Using C#2010/SQL Server 2008)

Hi guys,



It looks like Quick License Manger is going to be a winner here. I have been testing some implementation o a plain .Net project and so far so good.



Their product includes a web service you can install on your host computer or your ISP for online activation and many other goodies.



The control of the activation process is also pretty good and flexible for the developer/customer service. Still I need to do more in deep testing, but so far they have everything I need in a License Manager tool.

Edhy Rijo