Historically, many Unit4 Business World (Agresso) customers have relied on ARC as their reporting tool of choice when it came to the development of their system reports.
Over recent times though, the core technology behind the ARC reporting tool has become outdated due to the fact Windows now operates by default as a 64-bit operating system rather than 32-bit, the version on which the ARC reporting tool is built upon.
This has led to users of the ARC reporting tool within Unit4 Business World (Agresso) experiencing a growing number of issues when running their reports.
A list of some of the key issues experienced by customers are outlined below, although it is important for us to stress this is only a very small selection of the problems you may encounter from using ARC reports:
- Pure ARC reports (.rpx files) will not run on a 64bit Report Server queue.
- ARC reports will not run on any web-server under any circumstances
- Poor memory handling when processing large reports (especially if they contain images), combined with the fact that ARC is 32bit software causes reports to run slowly, and puts an upper limit on the maximum number of pages in the report output (typically 500 to 1000).
- Some image files created by modern systems cannot be displayed by ARC. Such images do not cause an exception but simply result in a blank space in the report.
These growing number of issues have led to Unit4 beginning to phase out the ARC reporting tool. This has so far involved them making the ‘New ARC report’ functionality unavailable within the Report Studio of Unit4 Business World (Agresso), and launching an ‘ARC to Xtra Convertor’ tool to help customers convert their reports.
Going forward, it is strongly recommended that whenever you are required to make changes to any of your ARC reports, that you should first convert them to Xtra reports. Even if no changes are required to be made to your ARC reports in the foreseeable future, it is recommended that you should proactively be making plans for when you going to convert your reports to prevent issues later down the line.
As a team, we possess experience of not only utilising the ARC to Xtra Convertor tool in order to help ensure your reports are converted, but also in providing training so that your team are able to utilise the tool themselves, and increase their internal knowledge and skillset surrounding Xtra reports.
