When you start Adaptive Server 12.5, it attempts to locate the license file license.dat located in $SYBASE/$SYBASE_SYSAM/licenses. If the file does not exist, Adaptive Server looks for the license file specified in the environment variable LM_LICENSE_FILE.
The license file contains a pointer to the SySAM software on the primary server known as the license host, or to a remote license host where SySAM is running. SySAM consists of a utility, lmutil, to manage licensing activities, and two daemons—the license management daemon, lmgrd, and the SYBASE daemon. The daemons handle requests to check in or check out licensed features, as shown in Figure 3-1.
Using information in the license file, Adaptive Server connects to SySAM and attempts to check out a license (ASE_SERVER) for the base Adaptive Server product. If the ASE_SERVER license is checked out successfully, Adaptive Server continues to start and attempts to check out any optional features enabled in server_name.cfg.
If Adaptive Server is configured to use optional features, such as distributed transaction management (ASE_DTM) or high availability (ASE_HA), it attempts to check out licenses for those features during the start-up process. If a license is not available for an optional feature, Adaptive Server still starts, but the feature cannot be used.
