The licence policy contains all the licensing information for a Sheriff-protected product and is stored in a special licence file. This can be located in a folder that is named with the Product ID of the Sheriff-protected product.

To 'read' the licence policy a product must know where to locate the licence file; this information is stored in the Sheriff Registry.

The Sheriff Registry is normally automatically updated when a Sheriff-protected product is installed but to provide additional flexibility, particularly in a networked environment where a single licence file is shared between many machines, it is possible to manually edit the information in the Registry. For further details see the topic Registering a Product.

Licensing a Product

Licensing a product involves obtaining a licence key from the product's publisher. The licence key is used to generate the licence file referred to above. Normally this is part of the installation process (i.e. when a product is installed for the first time, you are shown a Reference Code from which the publisher will generate your licence key) but it is also possible to license a product manually. For further details see the topic Licensing a Product.