The Repository, Users and Licenses – Clarifying ER/Studio Services

Feb 14, 2011 // by Karen Lopez // Blog, Data Modeling // No Comments

In working with Embarcadero ER/Studio (currently branded as ER/Studio XE), I often find that accidental system admins are confused by what appear to be duplicate or overlapping set up steps to get someone up and running with ER/Studio and the ER/Studio Repository. This is especially confusing if the admin does this only a few times a year or does not have a documented process for setting up accounts.

Before getting into the details, let’s first define some of the terms for this how-to:

Embarcadero License Server: An application that runs on a server for managing the allocation of licenses for users of the ER/Studio suite of tools, including ER/Studio Data Architect, ER/Studio Business Architect, ER/Studio Software Architect, and Schema Validator. If you have concurrent licensing for ER/Studio, you must use the License Server to hand out licenses and keep track of how many are being used. Other licensing schemes may or may not make use of the License Server.

ER/Studio Data Architect: The ER/Studio data modeling client application. This application runs on your desktop/laptop. Also known as the ER/Studio client. This is the data modeling tool.

ER/Studio Repository: An application that runs on a server for managing versioning and releases of ER/Studio Data and Process models. This is the service that allows you to check out a model and check it back in.

While the ER/Studio client can be deployed without these other services, enterprises typically deploy both the License Server and the Repository to help manage the complexity of enterprise projects. However, to most modelers, it’s all magic to them: they run their local copy of ER/Studio and all these services work together seamlessly.

So when a user needs to be set up, they may need something to be set up in two locations:

The License Server
The Repository

And that’s where the confusion sets in, as it can appear they are having to set up users in duplicate. It is even more confusing because organizations can customize how they manage licenses (letting anyone who has network to use a license, limiting licenses to specific machines or login IDs, etc.) So I’ll leave the exact set up steps for another post. In my diagram above, that license server uses a concurrent user list to manage which machine logins (not ER/Studio logins, but Windows User Accounts) are allowed to use a license. Your licensing scheme may be different.

The reason why users, accounts, or machines must be set up in the License server is that this services provides licenses for each of the ER/Studio suite of tools, not just ER/Studio Data Architect. It’s also because an organization could deploy ER/Studio clients without the Repository or without the License Server. They are two different services that can be used independently from each other.

Once an ER/Studio client application has obtained a license, a user can start working with models. If that user is going to access the Repository, they need to have a login and a password in the Repository application. Note that this is different than any data that was provided to the License Server.

To set up a Repository Account in ER/Studio Data Architect:

Run ER/Studio client.
Choose Repository from the menu bar, then Security and Security Center
You will be presented with the Security Center window. Click on the Manage Users Tab.
Add the new User here. You will want to use your organization’s standards for login IDs and passwords.
Once a User has been added, he can be assigned access to certain projects and diagrams via roles.

Once you have completed BOTH allowing the user to get a license (via the License Server) and set them up with a login (User Account) in ER/Studio Data Architect, they should be ready to work.