This topic provides technical details on licensing of .NET Standard (.NET Core) projects, using LinqConnect. For licensing on Full .NET Framework see the Licensing topic.
Unlike on full .NET Framework, on LinqConnect uses license keys on .NET Core. The LinqConnect license key can be either specified at runtime, in the License Key connection string parameter, or placed as a file to the C:\ProgramData\Devart\dotConnect\License\ folder .
LinqConnect Trial Licensing
Trial license key files are automatically generated when installing LinqConnect on the computer. This means that even though .NET Standard compatible assemblies are obtained via NuGet packages, you still need to download and install LinqConnect trial from Devart website to generate the trial license keys.
LinqConnect Trial checks license as a file in the C:\ProgramData\Devart\dotConnect\License\ folder. LinqConnect Trial installation automatically adds the license files to this folder. When deploying your project to another computer, you need to deploy the corresponding license key file to this folder.
The license key file of the trial version is named LinqConnect.key.
LinqConnect Trial Licensing on Linux
On Linux, there is no C:\ProgramData\ folder. You can copy the trial license key to another folder (for example, to the folder of the application itself) and specify its path in the License Key connection string parameter in the following way:
license key=trial:/home/test/LinqConnect.key
Please note that on Linux the path to the key file is case sensitive and must be specified exactly in the same case as it is in your file system.
Purchased LinqConnect Licensing
After you purchased LinqConnect, you will get a registration email with the activation key. You can also view your key in the Devart Account, where you download your licensed product installers.
You must add this activation key to the License Key connection string parameter.
You don't need to specify your license key in every connection string. Once a connection with a valid License Key is successfully opened, there will be no further license check in a current application domain. So, you can load your license key from somewhere (from embedded resource, etc.), open a test connection, and after this your application can work with connection strings without License Key.
Here is an example of specifying a license key parameter in a connection string:
Using LinqConnect together with Standard Editions of dotConnect Providers
The Professional and Developer editions of dotConnect providers include LinqConnect functionality. Thus, you need can use LinqConnect features with the corresponding dotConnect key as described above. The same is applicable to the trial versions.
However, if you have a Standard Edition of a dotConnect provider and a separate LinqConnect product, and want to use features of both of them in your project, you will need to use both your dotConnect key and your LinqConnect key. You can specify both license keys, separating them by comma, in the License Key connection string parameter.
Key Loading Priority
Keys, specified in the connection string has priority over the key files, placed to the C:\ProgramData\Devart\dotConnect\License\ folder.
Licensed keys has priority over trial keys.
Key files for dotConnect providers will be searched and checked, and if valid ones are found, their features will be available.
License information is loaded once and has effect over all of the provider instances in the application domain. However, if a key is loaded from file from the C:\ProgramData\Devart\dotConnect\License\ folder is loaded first, the first opening of a connection with the License Key connection string parameter overrides the license information, loaded from the file.