The Padlock License Vault™
Background And Overview
Nearly all modern license management solutions offer a similar set of features. In fact attempting to differentiate various Java license management solutions based solely on features is likely an exercise in futility. This is an indication that the market of available solutions contain a mature product line, where innovation has slowed and something on the order of 90+% of the possible set of required features have already been implemented.
With such a point having been reached, it’s only logical to look at the next point of pain for software vendors. This is referred to here as the First and Last Mile Issue. With any license management solution, software vendors are asking themselves the following questions:
- How do we generate licenses?
- Once generated, how do we get them to our customers?
- How will we archive the generated licenses, both temporarily and indefinitely?
- How will our customer support staff access the license repository?
Padlock’s License Vault™ technology is a new open source initiative by Padlock Software aimed at answering these fundamental questions. By leveraging the fantastic Apache CouchDB Document Server, Padlock is able to offer a robust and high performance solution with a minimal amount of code. From the CouchDB website:
Apache CouchDB is a document-oriented database that can be queried and indexed in a MapReduce fashion using JavaScript. CouchDB also offers incremental replication with bi-directional conflict detection and resolution.
License Vault is a custom Java library written exclusively for the storage and retrieval of Padlock License and Key files. While not an application in itself, it provides the framework for a variety of high performance applications aimed at directly answering the 4 questions above.
Padlock aims to be the developer’s best friend for license management: meaning seamless, standards based integration is critical. CouchDB’s JSON based HTTP protocol means licenses stored within the CouchDB server can easily be accessed from any number of languages and platforms (even though the only official library is currently Java based). It is hoped that other languages will be officially supported in the future.
While other vendors may attempt lock-in with a variety of proprietary archival/storage mechanisms, Padlock takes the opposite approach.
Status
Padlock’s License Vault is in its infancy. At this point it is functional and has been tested in-house with several applications. Several key items remain to be implemented and it is in need of proper documentation.
Developer’s can get up to the minute source trees and documentation by visiting the project page on GitHub.
