There are hardly any commercial programs from the era of the late 1980's still running today, so the Microsoft operating systems from Vista onwards will not provide the full set of means to run them.

Advanced Revelation is one of these programs, and Revelation Software recommends that it not be run on Vista [onward] workstations. They say there are too many problems running ARev on Vista [onwards].  They recommend an upgrade of Advanced Revelation to AREV32.  (See Revelation Software's press release, reproduced below.)

Will the 1980's programs still run on Vista [onwards]?  Yes.  For the most part, though they will crash occasionally. That's Okay for games.  Not Okay for essential business systems.  These days when 1980's programs crash, there is a likelihood of data corruption.  A record will be unreadable, and the system might not even start.  You will then have to restore from backup and re-do all the work up until the failure, hoping it won't happen again.  You will hope that your backup worked, and will also hope that the corruption is not included in the backup copies.  Sometimes a corrupt record is not discovered for weeks, until someone comes to want it.

Where does that leave you and your ARev-based package or custom-made system?

You have three choices:

1. Preservation.

   Keep a few XP workstations and enough spares to keep them running for the foreseeable future.  They will have to be moved to a separate network at some point, as firewalls and anti-virus software will abandon support for running on XP eventually.

   
   
2. Migration.
   1. Migration of your package.

      Find a new package that will do much the same as your current one, learn its different ways, and copy as much of your data as is possible over to the new package.  Some bits of the new package will be superior, some bits will be inferior to your current package.

      
      

      Or

      
      
   2. Migration of your custom-made system.

      Find a company to rewrite your custom-made system in a new computer language.  This will be a Windows-based language (there is no choice) and it will work in a similar way to the current system.  It will require a lot of money, and a lot of your time to test that every single bit of it works, (like you did when the current system was first written), and you'll be exactly where you are with the current system.

      
      
3. Upgrade to AREV32.

   Upgrade your existing system to AREV32/OpenInsight.  OpenInsight is the Windows-version of ARev.  Developers create Windows systems in it and it will be around for a long time.  AREV32 is a kind of ARev emulator which runs under OpenInsight.  A Conversion process takes the ARev windows and programs, and creates OpenInsight versions of them.  The result looks and acts just like the old ARev system, but with full reliability.

   Now, you can keep running your existing system by using the "upgrade path" recommended by Revelation Software. See press release below.

   
   

   Kennis can upgrade your system to AREV32, and make any enhancements you may desire. [C] Contact us.

   
   

The following is a press release from Revelation Software that can be found on their website.

Effective September 15, 2007, Revelation announces that it will no longer support any versions of Revelation or Advanced Revelation on Vista [onwards] workstations, whether running in standalone mode or as a part of a network.

Based upon feedback from our clients, our in-house testing, and anecdotal reports from the field, there appear to be too many issues with Vista [onwards] to allow Revelation or Advanced Revelation applications to run reliably.  We are saddened by this; these products represent a majority of Revelation's twenty-five year history, and we truly enjoy working with them.

However, we had anticipated issues with Vista based upon our beta testing, and we developed the AREV32 product as a viable, affordable, and supported upgrade path.

AREV32 will run on Windows XP, 2000, and Vista, has no 64K limit, and will work with all currently available hardware.  It will be maintained and supported for the foreseeable future.

Please contact your local sales representative for information on upgrading to AREV32.

We appreciate your understanding in this matter.

The Revelation Development Staff

Kennis can upgrade your system to AREV32, and make any enhancements you may desire. [C] Contact us.