Rhapsody TechBlog

BLOG about IBM Rhapsody. Contains technical information as well as more private travel stories.

Tag: Switzerland

Travel, travel, travel and… my EW 2019 Presentation

April 11, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Back in the air

The travel continues but hey… I’m the traveling modeler…. Last week I had an appointment in France but close to Switzerland so I took the plane to Geneva again.
As usual the moment of booking is mostly right before the mail or call with the question if you could also show up somewhere else.
Flexible as I am, I always try to arrange that. This was not so easy… I had to be in the south of Germany (Rietheim) and I was in France (Cluses). On the map that was 225km. Via the road it turned out to be almost 500…. The Swiss have these “Mountains” that really take in a lot of space…
But I organize all of it and so I took the train to Schiphol (My second home) and then the plane to Geneva. Unfortunately (also as usual) flights were cancelled and I was rebooked to another flight via Paris. Via CdG, not really my favorite airport (I try to be polite)
CdG lived up to its reputation… although I was only a few meters away from the gate of my connections flight I had to take a detour to go through the pass control… ( What happened to Schengen?) But I made it in time to the connecting flight (I could even drink coffee in the lounge.)

Platinum

Yes. The lounge… since recently KLM has handed me my platinum card. I crossed 300XP within one year. (Yes KLM no longer has miles… you earn XP when you fly, like in Pokémon Go)
This makes the traveling life much more easy and comfortable. And a comfortable place to write BLOg entries…

Snow!

Yep… Snow. And a lot. After flying the second leg of the trip to Genève, I picked up my rental car and drove out of the parking lot and asked myself: What is this white stuff falling from the sky??
It was snowing. I did not expect that. Luckily Hertz was so friendly to rent me a BMW 120d xDrive. (4-wheel Drive ) with decent wintertyres. That helped. But is was quite a drive. So finally I arrived at the hotel that luckily had parking places. And (what I first noticed in the morning, a Skipass machine… I was in a ski area….

Switzerland

the next day, after a good day at the customer I drove to Rietheim in south-Germany. That was a seriously long drive. Through a lot of snow.. And again arriving in the hotel at 10pm… After the customer visit the next day I had to drive almost the same distance back. Not as far because I had a hotel room close to the airport. The next day I returned the car and flew back without trouble.

Embedded World 2019

I have written about that already: EW 2019, we had a booth there but I also had a presentation! Not entirely about Rhapsody but about SECollab, also interesting enough! Here is the link to it: video, it is in English.

That was it! Happy modeling with Rhapsody!

Walter van der Heiden (wvdheiden@willert.de)

Geneva in 1 day and Framework Training

February 21, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Introduction

I do not only do long haul flights to far-away countries. i also do day trips to destinations that are a bit closer.
This time I had to be in Geneva (also called Genève or Genf depending on your language..) There is a direct flight from Schiphol airport. An early one to Geneva and a late one back. So I booked and, for a change, I travelled light.

The Trip

It felt funny all day to hardly have luggage… I looked up multiple time in panic from the feeling something was missing… human habits… strange thing.
But it was a long day. I woke up at 5 to be in the 5:45 train to Schiphol. I always hear people complaining about trains being late and not arriving at all. I have to say that I never had trouble with that… Its the planes that give me trouble.. or the airports.. or the airline..

Being up that early had one advantage. The papers and the internet were talking since days about an event that was coming up: “The Superbloodwolfmoon” or something like that… The disadvantage was that you had to get up early to see it… and I was. It looked very nice, the picture was not as cool as I wanted but hey, it’s not a camera, it’s a phone!


So I was on Schiphol on time, without the need to check-in luggage I just walked on to the lounge. In exactly 2 hours from my own chair to the lounge chair. Not bad.
Flight went well, I picked up my rental car and picked up the colleagues that were also there to drive to the customer.
It was a short visit, convincing the customer was not difficult, i gave a quick demo of Rhapsody using the RXF (in C++) and the fantastic Target Debugger. That mostly impresses the s…t out of new customers, certainly if they have been using Rhapsody before.
So we were back in time at the airport, we could even drink a quick cup of coffee. Then the flight back was leaving. After arrival I took the train back and was at home at 23:15. A long day indeed.

Training

I am asked a lot about what people need to do to learn more about Rhapsody. Well that is very easy. Try to visit relevant congresses like the ESE in Germany, also the Embedded World where the famous Bruce Powel Douglass gives lectures about MBSE. Also our MESCONF, the Rhapsody User Group Meetings and the IBM IoT meetings are very recommended to visit, you will learn a lot about Rhapsody and have the opportunity to speak with lots of other Rhapsody users.

Also highly recommended are trainings. The basic training (Yes, even if you already have experience with Rhapsody but have acquired your knowledge by learning it by yourself: a training will improve your knowledge! (I did that myself. After 6 months Rhapsody and creating adapters I visited a Training given by Martin Stockl. I thought, well let’s visit that maybe I learned something new… I can tell you I have never learned so much as during that training….

We also have advanced trainings, about different subjects. Also we have partners, like Frank Braun from Evocean that give very interesting Trainings like the standard C++ Raspberry Pi Training and soon the Framework Training (9/10 April in Munich. That will boost your Rhapsody knowledge! (Is in the German language) You can apply directly on our website.

That was it! Happy modeling with Rhapsody!

Walter van der Heiden (wvdheiden@willert.de)

Switzerland

September 25, 2018 / / 0 Comments

On the Road again

This week started with a flight to Switzerland. On Saturday night to be precise, my plane left Sunday morning at 7 from Schiphol, I cannot make that in time. So I slept in a hotel near the airport.

It turned out to be a “sporty” day, the hotel Shuttle brought me to Terminal 3 while I had to be in terminal 1…. also the first shuttle left the hotel at 6, drive took 15 minutes, all quite “sporty” to be in time.

But I made it with some running and I still had time to buy a present for my hosts.

Switzerland is a beautiful country, the flight brought me to Geneva, first time I’ve been there. From there the train took me to Neuchâtel, a really beautiful city next to the lake. The problem for us “other Europeans” is that Switzerland is expensive. Really expensive. The simplest things costs about 3 times what they cost in Germany. I always joke that when you want to have dinner you first have to raise your mortgage.
a bit exaggerated but with a slight truth in there.

But, as already said, the country is beautiful so I decided to enjoy it and not mind the costs.

Unfortunately it was not just fun and vacation… i had to work as well. But it was quite successful, that helps!

This weeks Rhapsody problem was mostly trouble with license keys. Mostly when everything works, it will continue to work. But before it works… and when it stops working…
After installing Rhapsody you should install the license. There are multiple ways to have a license, Authorised User or Floating (or Tokens), File or Dongle, EUSIII, Developer, Designer or Architect.

Authorised or Floating

A floating license is installed on a server. It can be used by multiple people though not at the same time. The license file will have a line that points to the server.

An authorised license can only be used by one person. You can, of course, change this person when a project ends or somebody quits but not multiple times a day.

You can have a dongle license but then you still have a license file, one with the dongle ID in there.

You should keep a document (Excel Sheet) with the names of the persons that use certain licenses. (In fact you have to according to the license agreement)

If you want to use Rhapsody in a continuous build environment you have to have a floating license.

The Rhapsody version is determined in the license file (and you have to start the right version of course! I have written a lot about starting the right version, try: (Un-)Installing and Configuring Rhapsody or Installing Rhapsody

The license file must be in a place where Rhapsody looks for it. this is determined by an Environment Variable: TELELOGIC_LICENSE_FILE. This points to the path where the license lives. (Only the path if the license file is called license.lic, otherwise the complete path.

To make things a bit more complicated, flex-lm also looks in the registry where it stores all previous paths where it found a license.
There is a neat program that you can use to check if the license is found and if it is correct, it is called lmtools. use that to check if your flex-lm is OK.

The pictures

 

That was it! Happy modeling with Rhapsody

Walter van der Heiden ( wvdheiden@willert.de )

Your license is safe in Switzerland. Very Safe…

March 8, 2018 / / 0 Comments

Introduction

This week I’m in Switzerland. helping a customer to install and use Rhapsody and a lot of other tools. Switzerland is cool, very nice to travel to because of the beautiful landscape. Not nice to travel to because everything is soooo expensive… For the price of a  normal meal I can feed my entire family in Germany… This time I was lucky, finding a very nice and quiet hotel where the food was delicious and not even that expensive (Well not for Switzerland…) I was also lucky with picking up my rental car: a free upgrade… OK, not a Merc, but the BMW 420D X-Drive was a nice car. And the snow on the last day was a piece of cake with the 4-wheel drive and the winter tires.

Back to work

As I have written before, it is not easy to install all tools in a way that everything works. Careful planning is required here.

Willert RXF License

The RXF does not have a license. There are 2 types of customers: One that is willing to pay and one that will never pay for software. License mechanisms are only there to annoy the first type: People that have paid for software and are legally entitled to use it.
The second type tries to hack it and if that is not possible: they will use other software.
We at Willert have rather that people steal our software then that they buy it from our competitors.

IBM Rhapsody license

IBM uses the so-called Flexible License Manager (Flex-LM), in spite of the name it is a very inflexible piece of software. Many things can go wrong there. We literally spend hours to get the stuff running sometimes.

Steady or Floating?

There are many different license types for Rhapsody depending on how you use the software and what version you use.

  • AU – Authorized User
  • FL – Floating User

The difference between these 2 is that an AU License is for a named person. This has to be the same person, always! (You can, of course, move the license internally but not on an hourly basis)
An FL can be used by multiple persons that not even have to be on the same location just not on the same time. Theoretically, if you have sites all over the world, you can have 3 people working a full day with same license. IBM allows that, Telelogic had a special (more expensive) license for that.
NOTE: IBM requires you to have a list available with the licenses you use and the names of the actual user! They are entitled to check that. (This is one of the points in the license agreement that you have not read)

Server, Locally or Dongle?

Flex-LM works with a license file. There are parts built into the software that uses it to check the file and determine if you are allowed to start it.

  • Server, you have a server that is reachable for everyone in the company (Yes that can be an international server)
  • Locally Server, you have the Flex-LM server on your local machine
  • Locally license file, there is no Flex-LM server, Rhapsody will read and decode the license file itself. The license file uses your network cards MAC address as a “key”.
  • Locally Dongle, you have a license file that uses the Dongle “ID” as a “key”

For the Server (local or remote) you need to install the Flex-LM key Manager

Have I already told you that I hate Windows?

I do. Really. It is such a @#$%^&*( OS. The fact that you must distinguish between 32-Bit and 64-Bit is already a pain not to mention everything else.
So for the dongle driver you need to check if you have 32- or 64-Bit. Also it seems to be a bit of a problem when you have the latest Windows 10 version. (although it seems to be Windows Type, (Home, Pro, ultimate, etc) dependant.
You can download your driver here.

OK. I did all that. It doesn’t work. Now what?

First: Don’t get mad or sad, this is not abnormal… Here are some pointers where you can start to get stuff running:

  • As always: You can ask us. We help you.
  • You can ask google. You’ll be surprised what google knows when you type in your exact error message.
  • READ the error message. Flex-LM mostly says exactly what the problem is.
  • find your lmtools.exe program, it helps you finding what is wronglmtoolsMain
  • There is an environment variable TELELOGIC_LICENSE_FILE that points to license files or paths where license files are (The latter only finds “license.lic” files). Unfortunately this is not the only source for locations, there is also:
  • A Registry Entry: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\FLEXlm License Manager also has a Field “TELELOGIC_LICENSE_FILE” that contains the path information. If you want to delete incorrect entries you have to do it here as well… Flex-LM updates this entry when you add new paths to the Environment Variable but does not delete any when you change the Env Var again…
  • Check the number of your Dongle (Do this also physically on the Dongle itself) in the lmtools tab: “System Setting” and in the license file.
  • Any change in your system, OS update or Rhapsody update can influence the working of your license. beware of that. So if your license does not work anymore, try to check if something happens to the OS or other software (Check logs files)
  • Do you have a new network card? Most licenses work with your MAC address. Sometimes you can change the MAC address of your network card. But you can ask for a new license, IBM will give you one (Not every week of course…)

So. I hope this helps a little bit!

Happy modeling with Rhapsody!

Walter van der Heiden (wvdheiden@willert.de)

 

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