Method and system for metering usage of software products with fast run-time identification

A method ( 300 ) for metering usage of software products in a data processing system is proposed. The products to be metered are identified in a global catalogue ( 325 ) by means of multiple attributes of a corresponding executable module ( 340 ); the verification of these attributes requires accessing the module through its path, which is not available at run-time (being the module directly identified by a corresponding location for performance reasons) . The solution is based on the idea of creating a local catalogue ( 350 ) that associates the path of each module installed on the system (that is included in the global catalogue) with its location. The locations of the running modules are detected ( 365 ) periodically from a list of processes in execution on the system. In this way, it is possible to obtain ( 355 ) the path corresponding to the location of each running module in a very fast way trough the local catalogue (without any scanning of the system). The running module can now be accessed ( 360 ) for extracting its attributes required for the identification of the corresponding product in the global catalogue.