Creating a licensed software record based only on application name and version number can cause inaccurate license counts in certain scenarios. This potential issue is addressed through the use of software tagging. Software tagging is the process of companies including a software identification (SWID) tag with each installation of their software. Each software company has their own unique registration identifier (reg ID) that matches the SWID tag. The SWID tag is an XML file that contains information about the identification, license, and management of an individual piece of software. Therefore, if a computer has a suite of applications it could potentially have multiple SWID tags.
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Installation type (standard versus subscription-based)
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Installation status (stand-alone versus part of a suite)
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Installation status based on suite (standard versus extended)
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Installation serialization status (trial, serialized, etc.)
The international standard for SWID tags is ISO/IEC 19770-2:2009.