SatoTravel is first customer for new Lanyon data-stream product

Business Wire, Jan 30, 1995

IRVING, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 30, 1995--Lanyon announced Monday that SatoTravel is the first customer for its new data stream translator product, Lanyon-CIAO.

Ian Cleghorn, Executive Vice President for the Irving, Texas, based software company, said the product cuts the cost of creating applications for third-party developers by making it easier to deal with the lack of agreed-upon standard formats within the industry. For example, a Passenger Name Record (PNR) in one CRS cannot be moved to another system without being reformatted.

A hotel booking generated by a CRS has to be converted into the format used by the hotel's reservation system. The CRSs use a short-hand, command-and-response terminology that has to be reformatted to be understood by anybody who has not gone through a comprehensive training program. CIAO also makes it easier to develop programs that give different CRSs an identical look and feel within an agency organization.

Scott Kellar, General Manager for Commercial Operations at SatoTravel's Arlington, Virginia corporate office says that CIAO provides him and other developers with a way to translate data into a common format that removes dependency on formats within an application. This makes applications simpler and thus cheaper and more reliable.

The product is particularly useful for applications that require high-performance interactive capabilities and have to work in a non-stop, round-the-clock environment.

As well as having to contend with widely differing formats, developers have to concern themselves with volatility within individual formats. One small change by a CRS can cause a major problem in an application. CIAO makes it easier and much less costly to maintain applications when such changes happen. Debug tools can be built into applications to identify exactly where changes have occurred when the developer gets no advance notice.

The product can also blend multiple formats where needed. For example, some management reporting programs may need data from both the CRS ticketing record and the PNR.

CIAO allows the user to prepare "reversible" scripts off-line in any word processor. A script that translates, for example, WORLDSPAN into a Common Data Format and then to Apollo inherently works in reverse and can translate Apollo to WORLDSPAN via the common data format. SABRE can be added quickly because all that is required is a script translating SABRE to the common data format.

SABRE can then be reformatted to both WORLDSPAN and Apollo. Only six "reversible" scripts are required to translate from any of the six U.S. and European based systems instead of 60 one-way direct system-to-system scripts. The savings are even more dramatic in the area of CRS ticketing records, where each system has multiple "levels" that send the direct system-to-system mathematical permutations into the hundreds.

CIAO is supplied by Lanyon as an object library that can be used with DOS or Windows based applications. A suitable compiler and linker, such as Microsoft C version 7, is required to integrate CIAO into third-party applications.

Traditional batch-EDI data of any length can be parsed or formatted with a CIAO script. A Validator utility allows scripts to be checked through single tests or sequences of regression tests before they are put into a live environment. The "reverse" scripting capability also provides programmers with a simple scripting test, because any data translated into the Common format has, on reversal, come back out as a perfect replica of what went in. Compiled scripts can be installed in a live program without stopping and restarting the system.

For more details on Lanyon-CIAO, contact Lanyon in Irving, Texas -- phone 214/929-8121, fax 214/929-4228 or Chiswick, England, -- phone +44-81-994-4544, fax +44-81-995-4315

Background on Lanyon, Inc.

Lanyon connects PCs with mainframes for travel industry customers in 54 countries, including 123 airlines, and more than 2,700 travel agencies, plus tour operators, rental car companies, airports, hotels, cruise lines, insurance companies, Computer Reservation Systems (CRSs), consolidators, third-party developers, corporate travel departments, travel auditors, freight agents, travel schools, the US and Canadian governments, and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs).

Lanyon's travel agency customers range in size from less than $1 million in annual air revenues to more than $6 billion.

Lanyon also provides tool kits for travel industry developers who want to build applications on top of the basic Lanyon platform. Products are available for Windows, Windows NT, OS/2, DOS, UNIX, and various wireless systems. Developers use Lanyon-CIAO as a data stream translator, parser and reformatter.

The products are certified by CRSs based in the US, Canada, and Europe. Lanyon has been working with each of the four US CRSs for eight years and maintains agreements with their third-party programs -- Apollo Partners Program, SABRE Extension Program, System One Connection, and WORLDSPAN TechXChange. Lanyon also works with Microsoft through their Solution Providers Program and with Novell's Professional Developer program.