What is an upgrade line?

Some license files may include an UPGRADE line.  An UPGRADE line promotes a specified number of licenses from an older software version to a new version. The UPGRADE line contains the corresponding FEATURE line, the number of licenses to be upgraded, version upgrade information, the time-out date, and the keycodes.

For example, if you have ten ArcInfo 7.2.1 licenses and upgrade five of these to ArcInfo 8.1 licenses. You will receive an UPGRADE line with five ArcInfo version 8.1 licenses. You will then have a total of ten ArcInfo licenses and of those ten licenses only five can be used for ArcInfo 8.1. In this situation, the UPGRADE line in your license file will look like this:

FEATURE ARC/INFO ESRI 7.21 01-jan-00 10 CBBEE04176902D99226D \

  vendor_info="TTH5AA36KF0HKZXZ6069" ck=30

UPGRADE ARC/INFO ESRI 7.21 8.01 01-jan-00 5 1BCEB001FF4626A7E161 \

  vendor_info="5ZXFFAJSYP9HR55BR086" ck=48

The number of licenses in an UPGRADE line will always be less than the number of licenses in the FEATURE line.

If you upgrade all of your existing licenses to a new version, you will only receive a new FEATURE line to replace the existing FEATURE line for the previous version of the software.  No upgrade line will be issued in this case.

NOTE: Existing versions of the software (e.g., 7.2.1) will work with new FEATURE lines.