Building evaluation applications

In previous versions of 4D, developers could request evaluation licenses for development purposes, but providing end users with evaluation versions of built applications—whether standalone or client/server—was challenging or even impossible.

Starting with 4D 20.7 and 20 R8, you can now create evaluation versions of your applications. When a user runs an evaluation application for the first time on a new machine, it will automatically contact a 4D service to obtain a 14-day evaluation license—without any manual action required from the user.

This blog post will guide you through the process of creating an evaluation version of your application for demo purposes.

Creating an evaluation version of your application is simple

1. Open the Build Application dialog
2. Navigate to the Licenses & Certificate tab
3. Check the box to Build an evaluation application
4. Build your standalone or Client/Server application

The “Build an evaluation application” checkbox of the Licenses & Certificate tab

Note: Evaluation applications are available for standalone applications and client server ones.

If you don’t use this dialog to build your applications you can modify the buildApp.4DSettings by putting the Licenses/EvaluationMode key to true to switch to evaluation mode.

You can now distribute your Evaluation application to anyone. Each time it will be launched on a new machine 4D will automatically download an evaluation licence for this machine (Internet connection is necessary to first launch an evaluation application but not afterwards). An Evaluation application cannot use deployment license. Once trial is over, it won’t run any longer even if a valid licence is installed.

No Need for specific code

One of the key advantages of this feature is that you don’t need to maintain separate applications or custom code for demo and production use. The same application can be built with or without an evaluation license, and 4D will handle the licensing duration.

For additional flexibility, the License Info command has been updated. It now includes a new property “evaluation”, allowing you to programmatically detect if the application is running in evaluation mode—useful if you need to adjust behavior accordingly.

Here’s a simple code snippet to check the evaluation status:

var $license:=License info 
If (($license.attributes#Null) && ($license.attributes.indexOf("evaluation")>-1)) 
    ALERT("Your evaluation version turns off on: "+String(Add to date(!00-00-00!; $license.expirationDate.year; $license.expirationDate.month; $license.expirationDate.day))) 
End if 

Share Your Feedback

This feature makes it easy to distribute trial versions of your applications, helping potential customers experience your product before purchasing.

Have questions or feedback? Join the discussion on the 4D forum!