A METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR POPULATING A SOFTWARE CATALOG WITH AUTOMATED USE SIGNATURE GENERATION

摘要

A method and a corresponding apparatus for managing software licenses on a plurality of computers are proposed. The present method and system aim at populating a software catalog without the manual intervention of an administrator. The present invention reduces the cost of producing and maintaining a comprehensive knowledge base (the catalog) which contains definitions of software products and the related use signature. Information about software products and their related signature is obtained through a process which gathers information with an automated process which takes an initial snapshot of all processes running on a monitored data processing system and makes a comparison with a final snapshot after execution of a software product has been started. A "use signature" of the software product is then generated according to the difference.