OVERVIEW

ARCS is an acronym for Application Resource Control Service. It is a standard service that is specifically designed for controlling the use of application resources. ARCS fulfills the needs of resource locking, concurrency control, user counting, etc. A resource is anything that two or more entities, such as users, compete for. Examples of a resource include: a user-license, a suite of SQL tables/records, an installation process, a reservation, etc.

ARCS runs on a single Windows machine as an "NT Service". It meets the standard of "full recovery", which basically means that it maintains its state through anything short of pulling the power plug (and it would probably even survive that).

Your application can make simple requests to ARCS via HTTP. ARCS is a type of software that is commonly known as a "web service" (though using the SOAP protocol is optional). ARCS can be communicated with over an intranet or the internet.

Network file byte-locking is not utilized. DBMS table/record locking is not utilized. Both of those methodologies have known limitations. ARCS is a standalone service that is ideally suited for resource control and does not utilize or depend on any of the myriad of historical methodologies.

Building such a piece of software yourself may seem reasonable at first glance but it is almost surely the case that it will cost you more money than it takes to purchase ARCS. Matching the quality of ARCS would also take far longer than you may anticipate. Also, a given developer may already know how to use ARCS; if he/she doesn’t, they will be well on their way in 15-20 minutes.

In the future, Littlearth, Inc. will be working on a central/global ARCS that can be utilized by any software that can hit the World Wide Web.