Xenos Group Software Takes Advantage of the SAS/C Cross-Compiler for NT to Improve Productivity

Xenos Group is a world leader in e-commerce document presentment software and solutions. From existing host environments to the Internet, the company leads the industry with the ability to convert print data streams into any digital output media on any platform.

As one of the first companies to recognize the importance of legacy data/print stream output and to provide solutions to heterogeneous document deliver, Xenos has pioneered the development of print stream conversion. The Xenos Group transform products are "filters" that take a print stream in a specific format, parse it for format, content coding and information, and then restructure it to be compatible with a different print device. As the acknowledged leader in this market space, Xenos Group provides the largest set of these transforms available with 22 different conversions (e.g. from IBM's AFPDS to Adobe's PDF).

Xenos Group markets their software products for a variety of platforms by using Windows and OS/2 as their development and debugging systems, and ports to the many Unix machines as well as MVS and CMS for compiles. After reading an earlier issue of the CNOTES newsletter in which the beta version of the SAS/C Cross-Platform Compiler was introduced, Xenos Group's R&D division felt that their software development dream had come true. Offload mainframe compiles to a Windows workstation! They quickly saw the time and cost savings in terms of development both for their flagship software, Documorph^TM, as well as for the Xenos Group transform products.

Before using the SAS/C Cross-Platform Compiler on NT, Xenos Group had to upload new versions of the software source code from their PC network to the mainframe and then compile. Their CMS mainframe is an extremely low-end CPU, and the upload step took over one hour. The automated compile process for both CMS and MVS was over 24 hours. Using MVS to compile was not an option, as the company rents their MVS time and the cost of recompiling the entire product line would be outrageous.

Billy Guthrie, Vice President, Product Development explains, "With the NT cross-platform software from SAS Institute, we can compile from the network version of the source code. The entire product line can be compiled for both CMS and MVS in about ten minutes." He continues, "And by using the all-resident option, we are able to send the output of COOL (NT version) to our clients via FTP and let them link the module using the standard linkage editor. This saves us from linking on MVS and sending the new LOAD module via tape."

Xenos Group was also able to easily backup previous versions of the MVS and CMS compiles, and recreate back level versions very quickly when needed. Before using the SAS/C Cross-Platform Compiler, this was not practical. Documorph reduces the costs of document/statement distribution by delivering traditionally printed documents to new channels like the Internet. Documents that were mailed monthly are now easily and securely accessible from the Web, e-mail, or fax without the significant costs of paper and postage.