The license and the data meter
What this installation is licensed on, the fee that implies, the data units it has consumed, and applying a new license key.
Platform → Operations → License holds two screens: License & Metering and Backups. License & Metering shows the license in force, the fee it implies and the meter behind it. Nothing in the platform is locked by the license: a missing or expired one is shown for what it is and stops nobody working.
The two license bases
| Basis | How it works |
|---|---|
| Percentage of revenue | A percentage of the revenue the company filed with the competent tax authority for the prior year. You send TRANXACT a copy of the filing; TRANXACT issues a key carrying the year, the amount, the currency, the authority, the jurisdiction and the filing reference. The figure is fixed for the year and shown read-only, with the rate and the fee for the year. |
| Data units consumed | Outcome-based: the gigabytes of data units the installation consumes, with the price per gigabyte, any gigabytes included each month, what has been consumed and billed so far, and the fee for the month so far. |
Changing the license
The basis, the rate and the revenue figure change only when a new license key from TRANXACT is applied. There is no setting for any of them. A key is signed by TRANXACT: an installation can check a key but can never make one.
- Copy the Installation identifier from the top of License & Metering and quote it when you ask TRANXACT for a key.
- When the key arrives, paste the whole of it into Apply a new license key and choose Apply key.
- The terms change at once, and the key is added to Keys applied, with who applied it and when the one before it was replaced.
A key is refused if it was altered or not issued by TRANXACT, if it has ended, if it was issued for a different installation, if it has already been applied here, or if it is older than the key in force. Every attempt, accepted or refused, is recorded in the audit trail.
Data units
One data unit is one gigabyte: 1,000,000,000 bytes. The meter runs whatever the license basis, so a company on the revenue basis can see what the other would have cost. It counts five components:
| Component | Made of |
|---|---|
| Incoming data | Requests received by the API, and data pulled in from other systems. |
| Outgoing data | Responses sent by the API, and data sent to other systems. |
| Persistent disk | The database and the document store. |
| Processed data | Bytes exchanged with the database engine, and with the AI engine. |
| Backup data | Two parts: Backups taken here, the ones this installation took of its own data; and Backups taken by the platform, this installation’s share of the backups the database service takes before each software release. |
Incoming, outgoing and processed data are added up over the month. Persistent disk and backups count at the size last measured: sampled every fifteen minutes, and again as soon as a backup completes or is deleted. Counts are written once a minute and the screen adds the counts not yet written, so the figure is live.
The screen shows this month by component and part, day by day, and month by month for the months before, with the total data units for each.
Persistent disk always shows the database’s real size. If nothing has been measured in the last few minutes when you open the screen, it is measured there and then; if it cannot be measured, the screen says so and why, rather than showing zero.
Before this release, Persistent disk could read 0 on an installation that had never taken a backup of its own. It was the measurement that failed, not the disk that was empty, and the figure is now right from the first sample.
Who may see it
- Display on License & Metering shows the license and the meter; change on it applies a key.
- The backups appear on this screen too for anybody with display on Backups — see Backups of your own data.
- Neither screen is available to somebody signed in as another person, to an external accountant, to the assistant or to a service account. They answer a person signed in as themselves.