About z/XDC - Reviews - EMC :

"I am Jed Hickson, Principal Design Engineer at EMC Corporation in Hopkinton, MA, working in the Symmetrix Application Development Group. I have been developing for and supporting MVS and mainframe systems for over 15 years."

At EMC, we are developing applications for multiple platforms that utilize the Symmetrix Storage technology for data sharing and high-speed data access. In an environment that shares development between UNIX, Windows/NT, and MVS, we have a complex set of interactions for design, coding, debugging, and testing. I work primarily in C with significant Assembler language components. The Assembler modules typically handle critical low level I/O routines to the Symmetrix devices. In both the C modules and the Assembler language modules we are dealing with issues such as channel programming, authorized code, multitasking, and dynamic allocation.

All of the C code is written on a SUN Solaris system and compiled with the SAS/C Cross-Platform Compiler. The pre-linked objects are transferred to MVS and linked using standard procedures. Assembler language listings of the C modules are generated with the SAS OMD (Object Module Disassembler).

For the past 18 months, I have been relying on XDC to support my development projects. By utilizing the SAS OMD listings, I can easily understand the Assembler language interface used by XDC and follow the progress of my programs in a debugging session.

On which features and capabilities of XDC do I depend? I depend very heavily on the Cross Domain Facility so that I can run my applications in a near normal batch environment and still use the full screen features of TSO and XDC.

Recently I had a storage corruption bug that proved very difficult to pinpoint as the cause of the problem was distant in time from the discovery of the problem. With Dave Cole's help, I was able to understand the use of conditional breakpoints. Using a breakpoint that monitored the address that was being corrupted, I identified the bug in about an hour. This came after more than a week of intensive effort to find the problem.

XDC is one of the most powerful tools I use in software development. It works both with the code developed in Assembler language and in C. It is robust and powerful with an arsenal of tools and aids that make the often difficult job of understanding complex interactions in a large software design a great deal easier.

My experience with Cole Software has been very positive. Being able to talk with Dave Cole about a problem, or even a question about how to use a feature, is a big plus. Bob Shimizu has always been very helpful in answering questions and providing timely and helpful service.

XDC has proven to be a very valuable tool for my project and for other MVS projects at EMC. It is a high quality product built, supported, and maintained with the clear goal of supporting MVS programming. They have a very cool T-shirt, too.

Jed Hickson - EMC Corporation