LicenseException for SectionReports, ActiveReports 7.0.6158.0

Question

In an MVC app I am working on, we've recently began using ActiveReports 7 for our report-generating needs. On my local machine, everything works great. However, when we deploy to our Dev server for team-level testing, we get a LicenseException:

License for the SectionReport cannot be found.

We followed the user guide here to attempt different ways to resolve the problem.

What we have done:

• Ensured that the licenses.licx file references the assemblies, and that the correct ActiveReports 7 assemblies are being built with and referenced by our project. As it stands, the licenses.licx file looks like this (sans the line-breaks):

GrapeCity.ActiveReports.SectionReport, GrapeCity.ActiveReports.v7, Version=7.0.6158.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=cc4967777c49a3ff
GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Export.Pdf.Section.PdfExport, GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Export.Pdf.v7, Version=7.0.6158.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=cc4967777c49a3ff

• As this is a MVC web project, used the Assembly License Generator that comes with AR7 to create an [Assembly].Web.License.dll library, which we are building with the project in a /lib/ directory at the solution-level. This change had no effect on the License exception.

• Used the Web Key Generator to create a key for the App.config file. This change had no effect on the License exception.

What we have not done:

• Created some web form, and created an App_License.dll library that gets built with our project. The reason we did not do this is we are not using Web controls for our reports, we are not even using the GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Web assembly, and the error is not coming from any class in that library (which is logical, seeing how we're not using it.)

The only notable detail of all of this is that modifying the licenses.licx file had an early effect as we had a similar license exception on another component; ensuring that licenses.licx had the proper details ensured that that other component was no longer throwing LicenseExceptions in our app. I tentatively think from this that maybe my licenses.licx file still lacks something needed to make this app work.

The only thing remaining I can think to do is to recommend our lead license our server as a developer, but this possibility has already come up, and the direction we've been asked to take is to avoid that route if at all possible. I think it is possible because I have encountered similar posts involving people who followed the steps in the user guide above and presumably were able to solve the issue. Yet, for my team, these steps aren't working.

Question: What am I missing?

Answer 1

Using the Assembly License Generator as you have done should do the trick. Also, make sure that you are using the latest version of AR7 as according to this post on the ActiveReports 7 Support Forums, there was a fix done to some later version of ActiveReports 7 to correct some problem with licensing in this scenario. Specifically the steps given from the previously cited post said that following the below steps with the updated version corrected someone else's problem:

• Run the program "ApplicationLicenseGenerator.exe" (as Administrator) from a location similar to "C:\Program Files\Common Files\ComponentOne\ActiveReports Developer 7\"ApplicationLicenseGenerator.exe"
• Browse to the compiled ActiveReports DLL.
• Press the "Generate" Button.
• This generates a satellite assembly similar to yourclasslibraryname.dll.GrapeCity.Licenses.dll
• Place the DLL in the bin folder of your web project and/or reference the generated DLL in your web service project.

Answer 2

Answer: for non-licensed users, [Assembly].GrapeCity.License.dll must be added to the web project as a reference!

Licenses.licx matters from a build perspective, though. But the license file was not missing anything.