Muhimbi

Posted at: 12:03 PM on 22 January 2010 by Muhimbi

Any organisation that deals with computer software, free or otherwise, must be aware of the License Agreement that comes with a software product. How many computers can the software be used on, by how many users and how long is the license valid are only some of the questions that need to be answered.

We have invested quite some time in making our Software License Agreement readable for people without a legal background. However, it is difficult to cover all grounds using plain English.

This post attempts to explain the key elements of our Software Agreement in plain English. Note that this is only a summary and does not replace the actual License Agreement.

The following topics are discussed in this post:

• Summary of available licenses
• Renewing Licenses / Support licenses
• What servers / environments do you need a license for
• Licensing requirements for non SharePoint based deployments

Summary of available licenses

We use a graded licensing system to match your budget and exact needs. The following license types are available:
 

• Free evaluation version: If you install the software without a license then you are using the evaluation version. The software is fully functional without any time limits, but an evaluation message will be displayed on most screens and in any generated document. You are not permitted to use any evaluation software in your production environment. Support is provided using any of the means in the Support area on our site.
   
• Web Application License: This license is sold at a considerable discount to allow small organisations with just a single SharePoint server and Web Application to get started with our software. If you have a single SharePoint server then you can use this license on a single Web Application on as many Site Collections as you like.
   
• Web Farm License: If you have more than one server in your SharePoint farm or want to use our software on multiple Web Applications then you may want to consider this license. If you want to use our software on multiple farms or if your farm is spread over multiple geographical locations then you need either a Site or OEM license as described below.
   
• Site License: If you have multiple separate SharePoint Farms, for example when you are a hosting company, then this license may be the best option as it allows the software to be used on an unlimited number of separate SharePoint farms at a single location.
   
• OEM License: If your SharePoint Farm or Farms spreads multiple physical locations, e.g. across a data centre, Disaster recovery site and or local branch offices OR if you want to bundle our Software as part of your own solution then the OEM Subscription is most likely the best option. Please read the details in the Software License Agreement if you want to bundle our software with your own solution. Note that you are not allowed to use our Products to develop derived works that offer similar functionality as the Product or expose the features of the Product for use by an unlicensed third party unless agreed with Muhimbi.
   
• OEM License + Source Code: If you need all the benefits of the OEM License and / or you need access to the source code to make modifications specific to your organisation, then this license type is the best option. Note that we do not provide support for our software once changes have been made to the source code. Please read the details in the Software License Agreement if you want to bundle our software with your own solution. Note that you are not allowed to use our Products to develop derived works that offer similar functionality as the Product or expose the features of the Product for use by an unlicensed third party unless agreed with Muhimbi.

Renewing Licenses / Support licenses

Independent of the type of license purchased, you automatically receive a 1 year support license, which entitles you to free updates and access to our support desk using any of the means listed on the Contact Us page.

After the support license has expired your software will continue to work, but you can no longer download new versions released after the expiry of the license. You can renew your support license for 30% of the current retail price, which is not necessarily the price you originally bought the product for, although they may be the same.

What servers / environments do you need a license for

Licensing requirements for non SharePoint based deployments

Our products mainly focus on use from a SharePoint environment. However, some products can also be used from non SharePoint environments as well. For example, our PDF Conversion Service can run as a standalone service and be accessed from any application that supports Web Services.

The licenses are largely the same, with the exception of the Web Application License, which is only available for SharePoint based environments.

• Web Farm License: Get this license if you want to access our software from a single solution on an unlimited number of servers located at a single location, using an unlimited number of developers and end-users.
   
• Site License: If you intend to access our software from multiple solutions located on servers at the same site, then get this license.
   
• OEM License: If you want to access our software from servers spread across more than one physical location then get this license.
   
• OEM License + Source Code: If you need all the benefits of the OEM License and / or you need access to the source code to make modifications specific to your organisation, then this license type is the best option. Note that we do not provide support for our software once changes have been made to the source code. Please read the details in the Software License Agreement if you want to bundle our software with your own solution. Note that you are not allowed to use our Products to develop derived works that offer similar functionality as the Product or expose the features of the Product for use by an unlicensed third party unless agreed with Muhimbi.
   

I realise this post is almost longer than the License Agreement is is trying to explain, but I hope it clarifies our licensing position. If you have any further questions then please check out the following sources or contact us at licensing@muhimbi.com.

• License Agreement
• Licensing FAQ

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Labels: Audit, MuSH, Partnering, PDF Converter, Products, WPP

Posted at: 5:29 PM on 24 September 2009 by Muhimbi

We are currently in the process of revising our marketing material. As we frequently receive requests for brochures from our prospective customers as well as our resellers we have created a flyer, listing the main features, for each of our products.

Brochures can be downloaded from the left hand menu on each product page or from the links below.

	Convert SharePoint Documents to PDF Format Use the Muhimbi PDF Converter for SharePoint to convert MS-Word or InfoPath documents to PDF Format, either manually using a user friendly interface or automatically using workflow components. Download PDF, HTML Version	Download
	Configure, Monitor and View Audit logs on your SharePoint Farm. Automatically enforce, monitor and configure auditing on your entire Web Farm for all existing and new Site Collections. Use the friendly but powerful log viewer to analyse and filter logged audit data. Download PDF, HTML Version	Download
	Reduce URL length using the URL Shortener for SharePoint The Muhimbi URL Shortener (MuSH) makes it easy to share long and complex web addresses via email, verbally over the phone and social media platforms such as Twitter by reducing the number of characters from hundreds to just a handful. Download PDF, HTML Version	Download
	Embed C# or VB code directly in SharePoint Designer Workflows The Muhimbi Workflow Power Pack for SharePoint allows custom C# or VB.NET code to be embedded in SharePoint Designer Workflows without the need to resort to complex Visual Studio based development or long release cycles. Download PDF, HTML Version	Download

Please contact us if you are interested in a localised version of a particular brochure.

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Labels: Articles, Audit, MuSH, News, Partnering, PDF Converter, Products, WPP

Posted at: 2:34 PM on 26 August 2009 by Muhimbi

During a recent optimisation cycle of our Audit Log Viewer (Part of the Muhimbi SharePoint Audit Suite) we noticed the RowLimit property on the SPAuditQuery object. Weird, not sure why we missed this the first time around, but we’ll gladly accept this gift and move on.

The thing is, some of our customers just blindly enable all audit events on all of their site collections and never look back. The record stands, I kid you not, at 848 Million lines of audit data in a single table. As our audit software behaves like a good SharePoint citizen, we access all data through the SharePoint object model and never touch the database directly.

Unfortunately, if a user queries the audit log and removes all filters, the SharePoint object model retrieves all data and happily converts each and every line of audit data into an SPAuditEntry object. This is a relatively slow process that cannot be interrupted and may result in extreme memory and cpu usage.

OK, so back to this shiny RowLimit property. Our log viewer already contained some optimisations to deal with large amounts of data, but being able to set the RowLimit is going to solve the problems of even our most demanding customers….. excellent.

Excellent indeed, everything was working great in our development environment, but during a regression test one of our Test farms was complaining and threw an Exception related to get_RowLimit() not being found…. bugger! We rubbed our eyes, fired up Reflector and compared Microsoft.SharePoint.dll from our Test environment with the one in our Development environment.

As is evident in the screenshot listed above, the version running in our Development environment (on the right) has public members that are not present in the version running in our Test Environment (on the left).

It appears that Microsoft has not documented on which version of the DLL the RowLimit property was introduced (12.0.6219.1000 doesn’t have it, but 12.0.6318.5000 does) so we have decided to detect the availability of the property at runtime to allow our software to auto optimise on systems running the newer version of the DLL.

The code is split up in two methods as the actual line using the RowLimit property cannot be in the same method that is testing its presence. This is related to how .net’s JIT compiler works in the background.

/// <summary>

/// Check presence of RowLimit and set the value

/// </summary>

/// <param name="wssQuery">The query to set the limit on.</param>

public static void SetRowLimit(SPAuditQuery wssQuery)

{

    Type t = typeof(Microsoft.SharePoint.SPAuditQuery);

    PropertyInfo p = t.GetProperty("RowLimit");

    if (p != null)

    {

        SetRowLimitInternal(wssQuery);

    }

}

/// <summary>

/// Internal method for setting the actual row limit. In its own method

/// to prevent the JIT from tripping over in the SetRowLimit method above.

/// </summary>

/// <param name="wssQuery">The query to set the limit on.</param>

private static void SetRowLimitInternal(SPAuditQuery wssQuery)

{

    wssQuery.RowLimit = MAX_QUERY_ROWS;

}

Labels: Articles, Audit, Guidelines

Posted at: 6:00 PM on 25 August 2009 by Muhimbi

We are proud to announce the availability of the SharePoint Audit Suite version 1.1.0.0. Although this version adds a number of new features, the main focus has been on improving existing functionality, fixing bugs and improving scalability.

For those not familiar with the product we recommend reading the original announcement. In summary, the Muhimbi SharePoint Audit Suite is a suite of tools that allow auditing to be enabled automatically on new and existing Site Collections, Audit Logs to be viewed using a user friendly viewer and Auditing to be monitored using an Audit Monitor. The software runs on both WSS 3 as well as MOSS.

The key changes and improvements are as follows:

For more information check out the:

• Product Page.
• Release Notes.
• User & Administration Guide.
• More Screenshots.
• Message Board.
• FAQ.

As always, feel free to contact us using Twitter, our Blog or regular email or subscribe to our newsletter.

Download your free trial here (1.5MB). You don’t even have to register, but we would appreciate it if you did.

Labels: Audit, News, Products

Posted at: 10:35 AM on 08 May 2009 by Muhimbi

One of the features that was sorely lacking in SharePoint 2003 was the ability to audit the use of SharePoint. Who had opened a sensitive document and leaked it to their buddy at a tabloid newspaper? … no-one knew, not even the IIS log files.

Third parties attempted to address the situation by modifying some of SharePoint’s underpinnings, but this had the unfortunate side effect that Microsoft would no longer support your, now non-standard, environment.

When Microsoft released SharePoint 2007 they announced that they had now ‘ticked the audit box’. And indeed, the platform supports auditing, but most functionality is either completely missing or lacking in functionality, leaving an excellent opportunity for third parties such Muhimbi to fill the gaps.

Today we are announcing the availability of Muhimbi SharePoint Audit, a suite of tools that allow Auditing to be enabled automatically on new Site Collections, Audit Logs to be viewed using a user friendly viewer and Auditing to be monitored using an Audit Monitor. The software runs on both WSS 3 as well as MOSS. For detailed information check out the product page.

Control farm wide audit settings

The product announced today is a Release Candidate (Update: The Official release version is now available). We have put it through an enormous amount of testing on different platforms including Windows Server 2003, Windows server 2008, 32 and 64 bit versions of MOSS as well as WSS and with various language packs. We are very pleased with the results, however nothing beats testing it in the real world so we would appreciated your help before releasing the final version.

Monitor the state of auditing

If you think you have identified an issue then please report it in the relevant forum or contact us directly. When reporting issues please be as specific as possible and include screenshots, event log entries, the version of SharePoint used, the version of our software used and steps to reproduce the problem.

Before reporting issues, please check if is not already listed in the release notes. We will give away a couple of vouchers to those people that report the ‘best’ bugs.

Query audit logs using a friendly viewer

For more information check out the:

• Product Page.
• Release Notes.
• User & Administration Guide.
• More Screenshots.
• Message Board.

 
As always, feel free to contact us using Twitter, our Blog or regular email.

Download your free trial here (1.5MB). You don’t even have to register, but we would appreciate it if you did.

Labels: Audit, News, Products