Remove Measurement Studio Enterprise trial computers with activated Standard licenses

[kvermeer]

When I install Measurement Studio 2013 on a development computer, activate my Standard Development serial number and license that PC over the Internet, and build some software in Visual Studio, the Enterprise Development trial is automatically selected in the build process. After 30 days, the license expires, and the software behaves as if it is unlicensed - that is, it crashes. A Clean and Rebuild must be run to select the Standard Development license and make the software work again.  I believe that this default behavior is incorrect.  This 30 day window is often shortly after delivering the machine to a customer, so it fails on their floor right after we leave! This is not good for our reputation or for NI's reputation.

One or more of the following options would be the preferred behavior:

(1) Do not automatically enable the "Enterprise Development" trial. This trial should be deactivated by default when a Standard or Professional license is activated, and a user should be able to open NI License Manager and Activate it as required.

(2) Show a warning on start-up whenever a trial license is used. This is what LabVIEW does: upon launch of LabVIEW the user would see something like "Evaluation License - 5 days remaining".  Measurement Studio users do not see this upon launch of Visual Studio, upon building the project in Visual Studio, or upon starting the resulting software.  It would be nice if you could provide a link that would instruct users on how to deactivate the Enterprise Development license in this warning.

(3) Use the lowest possible development system. If Enterprise-only features are used and a Standard license and Enterprise trial are available, then the trial is necessary (though a warning as in #2 above would be nice), but otherwise use the Standard or Professional license. This issue has caused us some embarrassment several times. Please fix it!

The workaround, according to Michael Keane from NI (in Service Request #7454045, if anyone from NI is reading this), is as follows:

I assume that in License Manager during those 30 days you would see a green box next to Standard edition and a half white / half yellow box next to Enterprise. The workaround for what you are describing would be to go into ProgramData (hidden folder, will have to type it into Windows Explorer) >> National Instruments >> License Manager >> Licenses and move the Enterprise .lc file outside the Licenses folder. It probably has "TmpEthernet" in the name. This way, License Manager would not be able to find an evaluation version license and I would expect the checkbox next to Enterprise to appear white after refresh. Then, the software would have to look toward the full license and no builds would be expiring.

This works, but is still leaves the possibility for the step to be forgotten and the software to fail shortly after delivery, which is obviously no good at all!  Please fix this!

[D-Cubed]

Hello kvermeer,

Can you describe exactly the process you have taken to reproduce this behavior? In all scenarios I have tested, in the case where the Enterprise evaluation period is active and either Professional or Standard edition have been fully activated, the license that is given to Measurement Studio at compile time is the fully activated Professional or Standard edition. 

An easy verification of this can be done in the following scenario:

1. Install a new copy of Measurement Studio, giving you access to a 7-day evaluation of Enterprise.
2. Activate Measurement Studio Standard edition.
3. Add a reference to NationalInstruments.Analysis.Enterprise.dll.
4. Build the project. Notice that you receive a build error stating that AnalysisEnterprise is not licensed. This would not happen if we skip step 2, because Measurement Studio would be granted an evaluation license for Enterprise.

Thank you for any clarification you can provide!

Warm regards,

Daniel Dorroh | Measurement Studio R&D

National Instruments

[kvermeer]

Thanks for the response Daniel,

The issue and behavior are a little different than your scenario. First, I don't add a reference to Analysis.Enterprise.dll.  I only use DLLs which my standard license covers.  However, if I had used Analysis.Enterprise.dll, there would be no build error.  When I activate Standard edition, the Enterprise trial remains active, and is not cancelled or superceded by the Standard edition license.

The process is similar to what you've described, though. I think that the evaluation period is longer than 7 days - I see that described at https://www.ni.com/en/support/downloads/software-products/download.measurement-studio.html, but the manual at https://www.ni.com/docs/en-US/bundle/350836e/resource/350836e.pdf says on page 7 "Any applications you build with the Measurement Studio Evaluation package have a 30-day evaluation period.", which matches my experience.  The process goes like this:

I first install Visual Studio 2012, and license it.

Install Measurement Studio 2013 (2015 now!), which defaults to the Enterprise evaluation, licensing itwith my Standard serial number.  This is a part of the installation process: Download https://download.ni.com/evaluation/labview/ekit/other/downloader/MStudio2015_downloader.exe on a fresh install and click through, and you'll see that there's a screen in the installer which requests the serial number.  I enter it in this step; there's no reason for it to be licensed with the Enterprise trial at any time.

Then, I check out the application from our source control, and open it in Visual Studio.  The check out includes the DLLs: 

NationalInstruments.Common.dll 
NationalInstruments.DAQmx.dll 
NationalInstruments.MStudioCLM.dll 
NationalInstruments.NiLmClientDLL.dll 
NationalInstruments.UI.dll 
NationalInstruments.UI.Styles3D.dll 
NationalInstruments.UI.WindowsForms.dll

(note that Enterprise Analysis is not included) and the license file: 

NationalInstruments.UI.WindowsForms.ScatterGraph, NationalInstruments.UI.WindowsForms, Version=13.0.45.242, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=4febd62461bf11a4
NationalInstruments.UI.WindowsForms.Legend, NationalInstruments.UI.WindowsForms, Version=13.0.45.242, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=4febd62461bf11a4

(note that Enterprise Analysis is not included; these are the only UI components that the application used).  The project file references the DLLs in the project folder:

    <Reference Include="NationalInstruments.Common, Version=13.0.40.190, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=dc6ad606294fc298, processorArchitecture=MSIL">
      <SpecificVersion>False</SpecificVersion>
      <HintPath>lib\NationalInstruments.Common.dll</HintPath>
      <Private>True</Private>
    </Reference>
    <Reference Include="NationalInstruments.DAQmx, Version=14.1.45.13, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=4febd62461bf11a4, processorArchitecture=x86">
      <SpecificVersion>False</SpecificVersion>
      <HintPath>lib\NationalInstruments.DAQmx.dll</HintPath>
      <Private>True</Private>
    </Reference>
    <Reference Include="NationalInstruments.MStudioCLM, Version=13.0.40.190, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=dc6ad606294fc298, processorArchitecture=MSIL">
      <SpecificVersion>False</SpecificVersion>
      <EmbedInteropTypes>False</EmbedInteropTypes>
      <HintPath>lib\NationalInstruments.MStudioCLM.dll</HintPath>
      <Private>True</Private>
    </Reference>
    <Reference Include="NationalInstruments.NiLmClientDLL, Version=13.0.40.190, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=dc6ad606294fc298, processorArchitecture=MSIL">
      <SpecificVersion>False</SpecificVersion>
      <HintPath>lib\NationalInstruments.NiLmClientDLL.dll</HintPath>
      <EmbedInteropTypes>False</EmbedInteropTypes>
      <Private>True</Private>
    </Reference>
    <Reference Include="NationalInstruments.UI, Version=13.0.45.242, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=4febd62461bf11a4, processorArchitecture=MSIL">
      <SpecificVersion>False</SpecificVersion>
      <HintPath>lib\NationalInstruments.UI.dll</HintPath>
      <Private>True</Private>
    </Reference>
    <Reference Include="NationalInstruments.UI.Styles3D, Version=13.0.45.242, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=4febd62461bf11a4, processorArchitecture=x86">
      <SpecificVersion>False</SpecificVersion>
      <HintPath>lib\NationalInstruments.UI.Styles3D.dll</HintPath>
      <Private>True</Private>
    </Reference>
    <Reference Include="NationalInstruments.UI.WindowsForms, Version=13.0.45.242, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=4febd62461bf11a4, processorArchitecture=MSIL">
      <SpecificVersion>False</SpecificVersion>
      <HintPath>lib\NationalInstruments.UI.WindowsForms.dll</HintPath>
      <Private>True</Private>
    </Reference>
    <Reference Include="NLog, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=5120e14c03d0593c, processorArchitecture=MSIL">
      <SpecificVersion>False</SpecificVersion>
      <HintPath>lib\NLog.dll</HintPath>
    </Reference>

Note that NiLmClientDLL and MStudioCLM are not copied to the output folder.  A later entry in the project file includes the license file in the build: 

<EmbeddedResource Include="My Project\licenses.licx" />

I then build the project, make whatever customizations required for this particular build, and we ship the machine.  Then, the customer calls 30 days later, complaining that the program won't start.  

[D-Cubed]

Hi, kvermeer

I tried to reproduce this issue following the steps you've outlined here. My conclusion is that an activated license supersedes an evaluation license. Please see the following experiments and let me know if the process differs from what you've done.

1. Install Measurement Studio, entering a serial number for Standard Edition.
2. Verify in NI License Manager that an active evaluation for the Enterprise edition (half yellow, half white square) appears as well as a fully activated Standard edition (full green square).
3. Open Visual Studio and create a new project.
4. Add Common, MStudioCLM, NiLmClientDLL, DAQmx, UI, UI.Styles3D, and UI.WindowsForms references.
5. Add two controls to my form: one scatter graph and one legend.
6. Remove all entries from the licenses.licx file save for the scattergraph and legend.
7. Build the project for both Release and Debug configurations in AnyCPU mode (I also tried x86). 
8. Close Visual Studio.
9. Open the bin folder under my project, and test the EXEs to make sure they run (they just open a form with two controls on it). All exes run. 
10. Advance the system clock forward two months.
11. Open the bin folder again and test the EXEs. All EXEs still run normally. 

To test the negative case (to make sure advancing the system clock had the same effect as actually waiting a few months), I then ran the following experiment:

1. Return the system clock to present day.
2. Open NI License Manager and Deactive the activated Standard Edition of Measurement Studio. Verify that the Evaluation for Enterprise is still active.
3. Open Visual Studio, and open the same project from the first experiment.
4. Rebuild all configurations of the project.
5. Close Visual Studio.
6. Open the bin folder under my project, and test the EXEs to make sure they run. All exes run. 
7. Advance the system clock forward two months.
8. Open the bin folder again and test the EXEs. None of the EXEs run. 

Is it possible that the binary that was sent to your customer was actually built before you had activated your Standard Edition license on your build machine?

Warm regards,

Daniel Dorroh | Measurement Studio R&D

National Instruments

[kvermeer]

Thanks for the thorough work to reproduce the issue!  I'm sorry it didn't work out as expected.  I don't have any PCs without Measurement Studio installed right now, but I should have four in about a week, and will give it a try.

[D-Cubed]

Hi, kvermeer

Any updates on what you found when you tried this?

Thanks,

Daniel Dorroh | Measurement Studio R&D

National Instruments