This article discusses why a user might see the error message:

"Attempt to access application in a way not permitted by licensing (more than one instance detected)"

when running a single instance of a WebObjects 4 application with a web server using the Developer license.

The WebObjects 4 Developer license permits the following:

• Platform: Windows NT and, with WebObjects 4.0.1, Mac OS X Server
• Single application instance
• Single Processor
• No multithreading
• No load balancing
• 25 transactions per minute on Windows NT
• 50 transactions per minute on Mac OS X Server

By default, WebObjects is set up to run in DirectConnect mode, but if you want to do some limited testing with an http server, you might encounter the following error:

"Attempt to access application in a way not permitted by licensing (more than one instance detected)."

To understand why that error message occurs, even if only a single instance of your application is running, take a look at your public WebObjects.conf file in $(NEXT_ROOT)/Library/WebObjects/Configuration. It probably lists an entry like:

MyApp:1@myhost 2001

where MyApp is the application name, 1 is the application instance number, myhost is the hostname, and 2001 is the WOPort. You probably also have a private WebObjects.conf file in the directory pointed to by the TEMP environment variable with an entry like:

MyApp:-1@myhost 2001

Since the Developer license allows only a single instance of your application to run at any given time, the WOResponse code checks for a hard-coded value for the application instance number. The hard-coded value it looks for is -1. If you change your public WebObjects.conf file to match the entry in the private WebObjects.conf file, i.e.:

MyApp:-1@myhost 2001

you should be able to run a single instance of your app with your Developer license without seeing this error message.

Normally you should not need to modify the WebObjects.conf file manually, as its primary function is for load balancing when using the Monitor application with a deployment license. For more information about the WebObjects.conf files (both public and private), please see TIL article70040 , "WebObjects 4: Public and Private WebObjects.conf Files." Also see the "Serving WebObjects" documentation for more information about running a WebObjects application under Monitor.