SecurityException when creating a root preference node on Vista

Question

When creating a root preference node (Preferences.systemRoot()) on Vista, I always get a SecurityException. This happens even when running from an administrator account. Has anyone seen this behavior and/or found a workaround?
Basically, I want to store an application preference (a license key) that will hold for any user on the same machine running my Swing app. This rules out calling userNodeForPackage. I've also looked at using systemNodeForPackage, but the javadocs say "This node is not intended for long term use, but for convenience in the early development of programs that do not yet belong to a package, and for "throwaway" programs. Valuable data should not be stored at this node as it is shared by all programs that use it."

Answer 1

Hello, Lars,
My guess is: as it's a 0..N node, when you dinamically add the node, it's not been initialized, as the parent node is empty (no elements). So, when you try to get its reference, it doesn't exist yet. That's why when you set the cardinality of the node to 1..N (or 1..1) it doesn't generate the error, as the WD4A framework initializes the parent node with at least one element, that can have a child node.
What happens if you initialize your node before trying to get a reference to it? For exemple, a bind_table (or bind_element) call before:
o_attr_context_node = o_context_node->get_child_node( name = '_ATTR' ).
Regards,
Andre