Hardware information

I'm looking at creating an association between a database and the hardware
that it is running on - for example by creating a license key that includes
a hash of the mac address.
Obviously clients will be able to query the database directly. What I'm
trying to do is to tie my client application to a specific database/hardware
combination.
What pieces of hardware information can SQL query ?
How would I get the mac address that SQL is listening on?
Any other ideas that I can use to tie the database to the hardware.
Thanks
Michael Tissington
http://www.oaklodge.com
http://www.tabtag.comMichael Tissington wrote:
> I'm looking at creating an association between a database and the
> hardware that it is running on - for example by creating a license
> key that includes a hash of the mac address.
> Obviously clients will be able to query the database directly. What
> I'm trying to do is to tie my client application to a specific
> database/hardware combination.
> What pieces of hardware information can SQL query ?
> How would I get the mac address that SQL is listening on?
> Any other ideas that I can use to tie the database to the hardware.
> Thanks
There could be more than one MAC address because many servers have two
network cards. You can query the MAC address from the IPCONFIG
command-line tool. From SQL Server, you can execute:
exec master..xp_cmdshell N'IPCONFIG /all'
You'll have to parse the results, however.
You might be better off sending a key to the customer based on the
server-name or MAC address and have that value stored in a table. The
application queries the value and decrypts it to make sure it's valid.
If it includes the MAC address, you can compare it against the string
returned from IPCONFIG.
In the end, however, the best way to control your software is to hire a
good licensing attorney and create a solid license agreement. Most
legitimate companies are very proactive abount licensing. Those that
aren't are going to steal it anyway.
David Gugick
Imceda Software
www.imceda.com|||Hi
And if it runs on a cluster, what happens then? There are a minimum of 4
cards per cluster, with SQL Server only seeing 2 at any one time.
Any form of hardware enforcement is actually counter-productive to disaster
recovery.
Regards
Mike
"David Gugick" wrote:

> Michael Tissington wrote:
> There could be more than one MAC address because many servers have two
> network cards. You can query the MAC address from the IPCONFIG
> command-line tool. From SQL Server, you can execute:
> exec master..xp_cmdshell N'IPCONFIG /all'
> You'll have to parse the results, however.
> You might be better off sending a key to the customer based on the
> server-name or MAC address and have that value stored in a table. The
> application queries the value and decrypts it to make sure it's valid.
> If it includes the MAC address, you can compare it against the string
> returned from IPCONFIG.
> In the end, however, the best way to control your software is to hire a
> good licensing attorney and create a solid license agreement. Most
> legitimate companies are very proactive abount licensing. Those that
> aren't are going to steal it anyway.
>
> --
> David Gugick
> Imceda Software
> www.imceda.com
>