Contents
Introduction
Simultaneous User vs. User Population Licensing
Using SiteSearch's License Management Feature
License Management in Action
This topic describes simultaneous user and user population licensing for SiteSearch, configuring your SiteSearch environment for simultaneous user or user population licensing, and how SiteSearch's license management feature works.
Simultaneous User vs. User Population Licensing
As described in Section 1. Grant of License, in the Open SiteSearch License Terms and Conditions (Terms and Conditions), your institution may license the SiteSearch software on a Simultaneous User basis or a User Population basis. Your Order Form specifies the license type and the number of authorized simultaneous or population users that your institution purchased. An institution may be an individual college, university, governmental unit, corporation, or nonprofit agency, or a consortium of multiple institutions.
A Simultaneous User license permits you to provide concurrent access to your SiteSearch system to a specified number of authorized simultaneous users. An authorized simultaneous user is a single user of a single terminal or workstation logged onto any service which is accessed via the end-user or system interfaces provided by the Open SiteSearch software on the Open SiteSearch system. If you have purchased Database Builder this license also permits concurrent access to the Record Builder application for the same number of simultaneous users. Your Order Form specifies the number of authorized simultaneous users included in your license.
A User Population license permits you to provide access to your SiteSearch system to authorized employees, students, faculty, and other authorized users based on the size of your institution (your user population). Your Order Form specifies the size of your user population.
Using SiteSearch's License Management Feature
This section describes how to configure SiteSearch for both simultaneous user and user population licensing.
Configuring WebZ and Database Builder for Simultaneous User Licensing
The Terms and Conditions of your license indicate that you must use SiteSearch's functionality to limit access to your WebZ system (and Database Builder's Record Builder application, if relevant). SiteSearch provides this feature beginning with version 4.1.0.
| 1. Review your license to verify the number of simultaneous users for which you are licensed. |
| 2. Open the OpServe.ini configuration file. |
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3. Specify the number of simultaneous WebZ users in your license by editing the MaxSimultaneousUsers variable in the [WebZLicense] section, such as this:
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4. Does your
SiteSearch environment include Database Builder?
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5. Specify the number of simultaneous Record Builder users in your license (which is equal to the number of simultaneous Database Builder users) by editing the MaxSimultaneousUsers variable in the [RecordBuilderLicense] section, such as this:
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| 6. Save and close OpServe.ini. |
| 7. Shut down and then restart the WebZ system. For instructions, click here for UNIX or click here for Windows NT. |
After you complete this procedure and the maximum number of user sessions is already running, OpServe does not route the next user session to the appropriate JaSSI. The patron and/or staff member who tries to start a new session receives a message that the system is unavailable. When this occurs, OpServe generates a message in the <WebZ_root>/stats/allServers.Stats log file. See License Management in Action for more information about this process.
By reviewing the allServers.Stats file, you can determine how often users cannot access WebZ and/or Database Builder and decide whether you should increase the number of simultaneous users for which you are licensed. If you find that an excessive number of patrons or staff cannot access WebZ and/or Database Builder, contact your OCLC sales account manager to discuss the possibility of increasing the maximum number of simultaneous users.
Configuring WebZ and Database Builder for User Population Licensing
SiteSearch includes no management tools for monitoring licenses based on user population size. Should your user population exceed the user population size specified in your license, contact your OCLC sales account manager to request an upgrade to your license.
To ensure that patrons receive access to WebZ and/or library staff receives access to Database Builder's Record Builder application, ensure that the MaxSimultaneousUsers variable in the [WebZLicense] and [RecordBuilderLicense] sections of the OpServe.ini configuration file to "unlimited". This is the default value for this variable in both sections.
This section describes how SiteSearch limits access to the number of a specified number of simultaneous users and shows what happens when more than the maximum number of simultaneous users allowed tries to access a WebZ system or the Record Builder application.
License Management Sections in OpServe.ini Configuration File
The OpServe.ini configuration file contains several sections that support license management by simultaneous user count.
- The [OpServe] section includes the Polling Period variable for specifying how often (in seconds) OpServe polls other servers for load balancing information, including the number of active user sessions under the server's control. In the example below, the polling period is 300 seconds, or five minutes.
- The [WebZLicense] and [RecordBuilderLicense] sections have a MaxSimultaneousUsers variable that allows you to specify the maximum number of simultaneous users for which you are licensed for each product. In the example below, a maximum of 10 simultaneous WebZ users is allowed.
- The [Stats] section includes lines for specifying the directory, file name, and roll interval (the interval at which OpServe should create a new statistics file). You can change the name and location of this file by editing these variables.
Exceeding the Maximum Number of Simultaneous Users
The following figure shows illustrates what happens when a system reaches its configured number of simultaneous users, based on the OpServe.ini configuration file shown above. This system has two JaSSI servers, each currently handling five user sessions. Each server reports its current user sessions to the OpServe.
When User 11 tries to log on to WebZ, the OpServe compares the number of user sessions currently running (5 + 5, or 10), to the value of the MaxSimultaneousUsers variable in OpServe.ini. Since this system is configured for 10 simultaneous user sessions, OpServe sends User 11 a "Service Temporarily Unavailable" message. It also adds a line to the <WebZ_root>/stats/allServer.Stats file to indicate the date and time it turned away a user.
The Service Temporarily Available message sent to the user looks like this:
OpServe does not start any more user sessions until the number of simultaneous users drops below the value of the MaxSimultaneousUsers variable.
The license exceeded message that OpServe adds to <WebZ_root>/Stats/allServer.stats looks like this:
By checking this file periodically, you can how tell often patrons and/or staff are unavailable to access WebZ and/or the Record Builder application. If this occurs frequently, you may wish to modify your license to increase the number of users that can access the system concurrently.
See Also