Cardbox Talk

But after a while the customer complained about a few functions missing. The most important for her was a validation function / tab. (Don't ask me what it does, I'm just installing the application.. not working with it). I don't know if it's a known bug for you guys, but perhaps it's a small thing to look at.

I finally resolved the issue by using the "License Loan" option in the cardbox server. Now the CB server is in full control of the licences and the clients are all unlicensed. This fixed the situation and the clients are fully functional right now.

additional data:

Client/Server sollution:
- Users don't use databases accros mapped network driveletter or UNC paths.
license type: Professional.
- Users open databases strictly via a server. Based on hostname without domain suffix.

user permissions:
- No writing on system disc
- Readonly permissions on the local cardbox directory.
- No write perms in registry HKCR.
- No write perms in registry HKLM.
- Write perms in registry HKCU.

About the previous situation with "license Location" (Shared license on network" it was approached via a UNC path and not a mapped network driveletter.

My opinion: The license system in 3.0 is needless complicated. It will generate annoyance and confusion. You will not be the first and the last person which has troubles with it...
A pity for the 3.0 version which has also big improvements!
Regards
Bert

This sounds like correct behaviour. You haven't given all the details, but it looks as if this is what happened:

You started by installing the Cardbox N-user licence on the Cardbox Server. This enabled the Cardbox Server to support up to N simultaneous users. In this configuration, each user's Cardbox (as opposed to the Cardbox Server) had no licence at all, and therefore behaved like a Client Edition. This meant that it could connect to the Cardbox Server and open databases on it.

Being a Client Edition, Cardbox was not able to set up validation on new fields. Basically the Client Edition is not able to set up validation or macros or user profiles or encryption, although it is able to use these functions once they have been set up.

[This is probably why your customer will have taken some time to discover that she *was* using a Client Edition, since it was only when she came to *design* a format, and set up some validation, that she would have noticed anything different].

Once you have turned on licence lending on the Cardbox Server (and licence borrowing in Cardbox) each person's copy of Cardbox will, on startup, be borrowing a licence from the Cardbox Server and consequently turning itself into a Professional Edition - with the ability to set up validation, etc.

The Cardbox Server Book describes the configuration process in more detail. As far as the design of Cardbox is concerned, some people want to use the Server-plus-Client Edition model and some people want to use the Server-plus-Professional Edition model, so we have to allow for the possibility of both.

Well, she was upgrading from a cardbox 2.0 setup. In which she had already setup validations. When using the new 3.0 setup she noticed when editing the forms she had no "validation" tab when editing the properties of fields.

By then she was using the databases on the server and using the licenses shared on a UNC path. (If this is not supposed to work, by design, I suspected it to generate a warning.. it didn't ;))

Combination used is Cardbox server with Prof. clients.
Server version is 3 build 118
Client version is 3 build 4187

Anyway, it's working right now. I'm just reporting my experience perhaps it might be usefull.

Every different type of licence configuration in Cardbox 3.0 is necessary and is needed by *someone*. We have no interest in designing and supporting licence configurations that no-one uses!!

"Shared licence on network" is commonly used by people who aren't necessarily running a Cardbox Server continuously. It requires that individual users are allowed to lock files in the shared network directory. With some networking systems this is only possible if you give the users write permission to that directory. In terms of network setup, "Shared licence on network" corresponds closely to the Cardbox 2.0 usage of the CARDBOX.SHR file, and so people who are upgrading Cardbox 2.0 installations often feel more comfortable with it, especially if they are installing the Cardbox program files in a shared location as well.

"Licence Loan" is an alternative that does not require any network file access at all. It is a good choice if you have remote users connecting over the Internet, and we are finding that it is a popular choice generally because it requires no knowledge of the network file system: accordingly our "Idiot's Guide" to setting up a network at http://www.cardbox.com/support/kb/installNetwork.htm now uses it as the main example.

And thank you for the warning in any case. We can't make improvements in response to user feedback if we don't get any user feedback!