| Metering Administration Tasks | |
This chapter defines your responsibilities as administrator, and explains the decisions needed before setting up the metering process.
Your product is metered on a line-of-code basis, and comes with a usage counter that is credited with a number of lines of code. The usage counter, sometimes referred to as a dongle, attaches to the back of the PC and is debited by the appropriate number of lines whenever you meter some code.
Each line of code needs to be metered only once, and so a record is kept of which code has been metered in a metering control file. When a user wants to process some code, the metering control file is checked to confirm that the code has been metered.
Finally, a text log is kept of every metering transaction, so that you can check which code has been metered against which usage counter.
To recap, the usage counter is used for metering, the metering control file is used to control access to the metered code, and the transaction log is used to monitor metering activity.
Copybooks are metered, but only once, even if used by multiple programs. Statements that span several lines are metered by the number of lines they span. Comment lines and blank lines are also metered.
As administrator, you are responsible for setting up and administering the metering process, which broadly entails:
Note: You are not necessarily responsible for metering code. You might decide to take on that task, but then you are in the role of an authorized user, not an administrator. It is the authorized users who meter the code using the usage counter and the metering control file that you have set up.
To meter code, you need to use the Metering Wizard: metering is not an administration function. See the Metering chapter in your User Guide for more information.
The usage counters have a direct monetary value, since they contain line-of-code credits that you have paid for. They are valuable and so you need to keep them secure and limit their vulnerability while they are in use.
To protect the usage counters while still making them available:
Users who are not metering code do not need usage counters. Anyone can work on code that has already been metered, without needing a usage counter.
As administrator, you are responsible for protecting the metering control file. The metering control file is valuable. Every time you meter code, it becomes more valuable, because it gives you access to all the metered code. Eventually, it will be more valuable than the usage counter itself.
Warning: A lost or damaged metering control file prevents you from processing the metered code any more.
The simplest way to protect the metering control file is to use only one file and not to give anyone write access to it. That means that you will have to meter all the code yourself.
However, you can protect the file in several ways:
The metering control file cannot be updated without an enabled usage counter, so disconnecting or disabling all usage counters also protects the file.
A variety of metering information is captured in a variety of forms, and is available for you to review and monitor as required. See Monitoring and Reporting on the Metering Activity in the chapter Metering Administration Tasks for the types of information available.
In addition, metering activity is logged in a transaction log which contains a history of metering transactions. It logs which code has been metered against which usage counter and when.
The scope of transaction logs is not restricted in any way. You can use them to cover any range of activity you require, such as:
You need to decide how you want to use the transaction logs and from that define which transaction logs to use for which metering activity. You then need to tell any users responsible for metering code which transaction log to use in which circumstance.
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| Metering Administration Tasks | |