Lion has some new specialities:
– A mounted disk image (dmg) will be mounted again on Mac re-start
– Per default “Show indicator lights for open applications” are disabled in the “Dock” system preference

So it is possible that…

You may start Merlin in Lion out of your /Applications folder
and a second time out of the mounted disk image, you had downloaded from our website in order to install Merlin on your Mac.
In the dock you don’t see the indicator lights so you don’t realize that it is running twice.

However it will be shown twice in the dock and will be twice listed, should you call Command + Option + Escape

Results for Reports…

In such a situation, only one of your Merlin instances, the one on which you started calling the reports first can do all kinds of reports.
The other, the second instance of Merlin running on your Mac, won’t be able to do reports.

Results for iCal Syncing…

In such a situation, only one of your Merlin instances, the one started fist, will be able to use File > Publish… > iCal.
The other, the second instance of Merlin running on your Mac, will show a grey iCal tab in the publish dialogue.

Results for Licenses…

In such a situation, only one of your Merlin instances, the one on which you started first will be running in full licensed mode.
The other, the second instance of Merlin running on your Mac, will be running in demo mode.

Solution…

So… in case you come again in the situation when the reports cannot update, cannot call iCal sync, or your Merlin runs in demo even though it is licensed, just check the amount of Merlin applications running on your Mac at that moment (call Command + Option + Escape) and quit the Merlin session which is not working as expected.

To avoid this from happening, just unmount your Merlin disk image prior to re-starting or shutting down your Mac.

You may also consider enabling the indicator lights for the open applications in the dock to be able to see when using double instances of your applications.

Reasons…

When you call File > New Report… a report process connects to the currently running Merlin application on a specific port. At the same moment, Merlin opens this port on the current Mac for the report to use. Next Merlin session calling the reports, will also try to access the same mac by the same port, but this Merlin won’t be able to open this port, because it is already in use. So second Merlin session cannot offer the report contents.

Also… when a Merlin session starts and you have enabled iCal syncing for some of your documents, Merlin connects first to the Sync Server. This is required in order to be able to sync with iCal when required. The second session of Merlin starting on your Mac will also try to connect to the Sync Server, but won’t be able to connect, because SyncServer won’t allow a second connection.

For the licensing… Merlin licenses are floating license, that means you may install them on as many macs as you like and be able to start only as many instances as the licensed amount of users. So if having a single user license, and started two Merlin applications on your Mac, your license will be blocked for the second Merlin user [instance].