Theta Licensing Manager FAQ

What is ThetaLM?

ThetaLM stands for Theta Licensing Manager. It is the new licensing model for Theta. ThetaLM and licenses can be managed at OnlineTheta.com.

What is a Floating License?

A Floating license is a license that can be shared with multiple people and machines. Software that uses a Floating license must remain online to maintain an active Session.

What is a Locked License?

A Locked license can only have one Activation (and therefore only one Session). A Locked license can be offline for up to 30 days. A customer will need to contact support if they want to activate a 2nd machine.

Locked license can be shared, but the customer would need to contact support every time they would want to activate a new machine or switch to a previously used machine.

Floating licenses are meant to be shared and so are the hardware sentinels.

What is a Special License?

A Special license is locked to a specific machine and user. Software that uses a Special license must be online. It is the most restrictive license type. This license type is currently reserved for Schlumberger.

What is a Host Name?

A Host Name is the name of the computer that will run software licensed with ThetaLM. Every computer must be activated to use a license.

What is an Activation?

A machine that wants to run software licensed with ThetaLM must first be approved by ThetaLM. Machines will have to be manually approved for activation after the quantity of activations equals the quantity assigned to a license.

For example: a Floating license with a quantity of 2 is sold to a customer. The customer installs the software and the TLF on 3 machines. The first 2 machines that try to Activate will automatically be approved. The 3rd machine will not be automatically approved and the customer will need to contact our support team for assistance with the 3rd activation.

Most machines are activated by using a combination of Host Name along with other identifying client information.

Machines using Special licenses are activated using a combination of Host Name, Username and other client information.

It is possible for a machine that was previously activated to change how it identifies itself to our software. If this happens then this machine will appear as though it was never activated and it will need to be manually re-activated.

How many activations can a license have?

Floating can have unlimited activations. A Floating license is not limited by Activations it is limited by how many active Sessions they may have which is specified as the Quantity for a license.

Locked licenses can only have one machine Activated at a time. Locked licenses are not meant to be shared.

What is a Session?

When a user wants to run software that is using ThetaLM, ThetaLM will try to create a connection to our licensing server. This connection is maintained by our software and is called a Session. If the connection is lost then the Session becomes invalid and will eventually cause the software to stop working.

Sessions are required for Floating licenses. A Floating license can have as many active Sessions equal to the Quantity assigned to that license. Sessions can also be thought of as concurrent users.

As an example, if a Floating license has a Quantity of 2 then there can only be 2 active Sessions (or 2 concurrent users). If a 3rd user that was previously Activated for that license wants to use the software then he or she will be denied until one of the first 2 users exit the application freeing up a Session.

Locked licenses and Special licenses behave differently.

What is a ‘TLF’?

A TLF is the actual license file. TLF = Theta License File. Each installation will need to activate their machine by installing a TLF. Most TLFs are distributed through OnlineTheta.com.

How do I view my current license information?

Run your software and click the menu: ‘Help’ > ‘License Information…’