Built-In Activation System

PxPlus includes a built-in internet based activation system. This includes the ability to upgrade a standard ProvideX® key to a new PxPlus key that will enable the PxPlus features. This new facility allows clients subscribing to our ‘Continuous Care Plan’ or the standard ‘Prime-time’ maintenance plan to obtain keys automatically as they update their software.

System Components and Operation:

When the software is installed, you will be asked to enter a product key. PxPlus uses a new 25-character key consisting of five segments of five characters each. This new key contains the product serial number, user count and option information.

As in the past, once installed the product will be activated for a 30-day period. Prior to the end this period, the software must be registered otherwise the software will not start. With PVX Plus V6.30 Development Suite, this registration can now be done online if your system is connected to the internet.

When PxPlus is run, the system will detect if you have not registered your software and will prompt you do to so. If you select YES, the system will connect to the internet to register your software. This registration process will retrieve all the keys associated with the serial number. This would include the ProvideX® permanent key, PxPlus option keys, and any add-on package keys that have been purchased. The keys, once retrieved, will automatically be entered into the system eliminating the manual process altogether.

We have included two programs that allow you to run the online registration process directly:

*plus/reg/net is the program run to register and obtain activation keys for PxPlus.

This program can be run directly from command mode, called from your application, or under Windows launched using the ‘Program’ command mode menu.

*plus/reg/demo is the program run to add a PXPlus demo activation key to an existing ProvideX® license.

If you would like to check out all of the new features available from PVX Plus using your existing license, this program allows you to acquire a temporary demo activation key that will enable the PxPlus features. This demo system will run until the first of the month following the activation date. Note that PxPlus will work using any standard ProvideX® activation however to be able to use all of PxPlus extensions you will need an additional PxPlus key.

Manual Activation:

If your system is not connected to the internet, you may enter an activation key manually. The following two programs have been supplied for manual activations:

pxpwactv will allow for entry and maintenance of all activation keys currently on the system (only in Windows).

pxpreg can be used to maintain activation/registration keys in text mode.

Information regarding the installation and registration of PxPlus software on Unix/Linux installations is available at:

http://www.pvxplus.com/unixinstall.htm

Automatic Version Detection:

Whenever the system is started up and no ‘lead program’ is specified, the system will check the version of PxPlus (TCB 29) to see if there have been any changes since the last time the keys were updated. If a change is detected, you will be prompted to update your registration. This will allow clients on our Customer Care Plan or ProvideX’s Prime Time to download and install new versions, as well as, to obtain new keys automatically simply by running PxPlus.

Network Connection:

The activation system uses https to get to the host, which should work with most firewall settings however, it may not work with the older internet "proxy" interfaces. In addition, the connection requires use of SSL thus your system MUST support this protocol in order to use the network activation system.

The activation system uses two redundant servers to help assure that you can get your registration whenever you want. The primary server is our primary web domain with a backup facility at our offices with indenpant name services provided by DNSExit to help assure availablility.

Additional information:

The online registration process creates a file *plus/reg/keys.inf that contains all the keys that were received from the key server. Should it ever be required, you can reapply the keys at any time simply by running *plus/reg/apply.

For clients with limited access to the internet, we provide an email service for keys. To use this service a customer may send a request to sales @ pvxplus,com to obtain the required information to register their software. In the coming weeks we will be expanding this system to work directly with the keys.inf file making the registration process easier for those without direct internet connectivity.

Finally, it should be noted that the PVX Plus Development Suite does still work with standard ProvideX activation keys. We continue to supply the standard pvxwactv and pvxactv programs to allow users to use their existing activation keys with their new software.