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Will creating and updating documents using a query metering license consume a query/hour?

Jason_Folkens
Champ in-the-making
Champ in-the-making

My employer is using the query metering license model.

It's stated in the Onbase SDK that querying for a document by documentId does not consume one of the queries.

I'm curious about some other specific actions.

1) will updating a document's keywords using query metering through the unity api consume a query/hour?

(It's understood that I queried for the document using it's document id, but will explicitly updating the keywords trigger the license consumption increment?)

2) will creating a document in onbase using query metering through the unity api consume a query/hour?

My expectation is that the answer for these questions are both NO, but I'd like confirmation.

Thanks in advance.

1 ACCEPTED ANSWER

Aki_Daiguji
Star Contributor
Star Contributor

Hi all,

I wanted to provide a clarification on the usage of the Query Metering license.

First, with answering Jason's questions:

1. Updating an existing document will not consume a query from the allotted queries per hour. The only action via the Unity API that will consume a query, is when you perform a document query.

2. Same as #1, it will not consume a query.

There are no functional limitation of creating new documents or updating existing documents via the Query Metering license, but that is not the main intent of this license. This license is intended to be used as a cheaper alternative for solutions with external end users that do not know or care about OnBase, and/or do not require full functionality of the OnBase software, and we believe that the document query would be the most important and prominent functionality that an external users would need from OnBase, so that's why this license only consumes when performing a document query.

One can argue that if the Query Metering license is only intended to be used for document queries, why is it able to do everything else that a Concurrent Client license can do, and that's something that I can't really answer since I was never involved in the initial inception of the Unity API, so I don't know the discussion that happened around this license and its usage in the Unity API, but my guess is that we wanted to leave that up to the developer to make that decision.

With all that being said, I don't see this as something that's black and white, as to say that if an external user is even doing one thing that's not a document query, the Query Metering license can't be used. I have seen many exception cases for using this license, from allowing non-document query actions to be taken, and even being used in a solution that are used by both internal and external users (internal users being the employees of the OnBase customer). It's mostly decided on the degree of how your solution deviates from the initial intention of this license, and that is something that should be discussed by folks at Hyland, but most of all, it should be discussed before the license is even offered as an option to the customer.

With what Alex mentioned about our material not reflecting this information, that is certainly true, so we will look into updating those materials, at the very least for the API Training class.

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5 REPLIES 5

Courtney_Smith1
Confirmed Champ
Confirmed Champ

Jason, updating Keywords and Creating new Documents are not considered queries, however doing this functionality in the API would require a concurrent or named license.

@courtney I do not believe this is the correct answer. I can update and create documents from within the context of a query metering license. Do you have a specific page / API article that you've sourced your observations from?

Courtney_Smith1
Confirmed Champ
Confirmed Champ

Jason, you can "physically" do it with the Query Meter license but this is not proper use of that license. If the users are OnBase employees they should be using the Concurrent or Named license, if they are your customers (external users) they should be only querying Documents if they are using the Query Meter License. Technically there is nothing stopping you from creating and or updating Documents. 

Courtney, I also don't think what you're saying is accurate.

I've been at one "Session Management Best Practices" at TechQuest Fall 2013, and taken the API Certification class, and I've just reviewed slides from both as well as the 15 SDK.

In all cases they say that Query Meter Licensing is appropriate for external users where the number of users is not easily known.

But in no case do the materials (or my memory) suggest that a connection using Query Metering should be only querying and retrieving. I can't find anything suggesting that connections on behalf of external users shouldn't be creating or modifying documents or other items.