Overview

To use the Talon runtime you must have a license. A license can be supplied to you by Neeve Sales or Neeve Support. Please contact them to obtain your free, evaluation or production license. You will be supplied with a license package containing the xplatform.lic license file, credentials to access the Neeve artifact repostitory, instructions on how to install the license and instructions on how to configure your build environment to use the artifact credentials.

License Installation

You can install your license in your application's runtime environment and/or as an application resource and/or by placing it in the user home folder of the user running the JVM of the platform

Installing your license in your home directory

Copy your xplatform.lic file to the home directory of the user that runs the X application(s).

If you are just starting with the X Platform, this can be the easiest option to get started.

Installing your license as an application resource

Modify your application build to include xplatform.lic at the resource root i.e. /xplatform.lic (in either a jar or in your classes folder).

Installing your license in your application's environment

  1. Copy your license file to a disk location from which you will run the platform
  2. Set one of the following environment variables or Java system properties to point to the directory containing license file.
    1. NVLICLOCATION
    2. nv.lic.location
    3. nv_lic_location

A few points to note

  1. The xplatform.lic file is a signed file. You must not modify the contents of xplatform.lic or it will be rendered invalid preventing your application from starting.
  2. License enforcement is performed when using most libraries distributed with the platform. A failure to find a valid license file will result in System.exit(1) being called, which will terminate the JVM. 3. Precedence of locating a license file is as follows where the first license found is used:
    1. xplatform.lic located in the folder specified by System.getenv('NVLICLOCATION')
    2. xplatform.lic located in the folder specified by System.getenv('nv.lic.location')
    3. xplatform.lic located in the folder specified by System.getenv('nv_lic_location')
    4. xplatform.lic located in the folder specified by System.getProperty('NVLICLOCATION')
    5. xplatform.lic located in the folder specified by System.getProperty('nv.lic.location')
    6. xplatform.lic located in the folder specified by System.getProperty('nv_lic_location')
    7. xplatform.lic located in the user's home folder (given by System.getProperty("user.home"))
    8. '/xplatform.lic' on the application classpath
    9. A license bundled at a different path specific to a jar provided by Neeve.

Note that at in all of the above cases the license location looks for a file named xplatform.lic. The file must not be renamed.

Debugging License Resolution

To diagnose issues in license resolution you can set -Dnv.license.debug=true when launching the JVM. Setting this property will dump license resolution trace to System.err which will provide information on how your license was (or wasn't) loaded as well as the locations in which the above search steps are performed.

When running a Talon microservice

When running a Talon microservice, your license information (including its expiration date if applicable) will be printed as part of the startup banner printed to System.out. The banner is only printed if the license was successfully located, otherwise the JVM will have exited before this information would be printed.

INFO   | jvm 1    | 2017/08/24 17:08:28 |    [License]
INFO   | jvm 1    | 2017/08/24 17:08:28 |      Issued To: Acme Co
INFO   | jvm 1    | 2017/08/24 17:08:28 |      Type     : Production
INFO   | jvm 1    | 2017/08/24 17:08:28 |      Expires  : Never
INFO   | jvm 1    | 2017/08/24 17:08:28 |      Source   : file:/root/xplatform.lic

License Enforcement

The license enforcement check is done the first time one of the platform's license protected APIs is used. If the license is found to be invalid, the JVM is terminated after printing an error to System.err that will look something like the following:

****** X license verification failed "<error message>". Exiting... ******");

When running a Talon microservice in an XVM, the XVM will ensure the license check has been done prior to your application being started. If you are using X application libraries outside of an XVM, you may want to ensure that the license check has been completed by calling the XRuntime.getLicense() method at an appropriate point in your application lifecycle.

com.neeve.ci.XRuntime.getLicense()

If the license cannot be found, or the license has been tampered with, the process attempting to use the X Platform will be terminated. It is therefore important for applications that use the X Platform libraries outside of an XVM to ensure that the license is valid in an expeditious fashion.

License Expiration Warnings

If your license has an expiration date, then starting 1 month before the expiration of your license you will see the following warning emitted to System.err on each startup of your application.

WARNING: your X Platform license will expire on <datetime>!