re: Interfaces -- MIDRANGE-L

Hank   etal
there are other routines written just for the AS/400 & S36 coding. No you
do not need the  latest  RPG either.  Covers about 104 possible
combinations.  On return they give both  6 & 8  character  versions of
date  and day  etc.

Glenn
===========================
From:Thomas A. Wilkie

Hank, excellent idea. There is a product on the market, licensed by
Platinum Techniologies, called TransCentury. It provide date routines of
all types, and date routine code generation in a COBOL environment. It may
do more than that, but I've given you what I know.

I have no relationship with Platinum other than customer.

Tom Wilkie
------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Hank Heath  Sat, 12 Apr 1997 

A few years ago, I was doing a *lot* of work on interfaces. Predominantly
these involved connecting time card systems to the G/L, or connecting
financial applications from different vendors to run within an
organization.  [And then there were the airline reservation systems, but
we'll talk about that at another time....]

When I was doing these interfaces, the dates and a few versions of packed
fields presented the biggest headaches. I remember saying one day, "You
know, if this vendor or the client decides to make their software handle
the century, we'll have to do all this work over again." I didn't like that
idea, so I tried to talk the vendors and clients into doing it right the
first time. Those of you selling Y2K solutions know how far I got on that
one.  That's when I realized that this business was going to be really big.

I find the interface aspect of the Y2K problem to be the most intriguing -
and the most difficult to manage. Many of the sites I work with are
starting (belatedly) to rework their internal code for Y2K compliance (in
the zillion different interpretations of that standard). Of these, maybe 1%
is allocating
resources to handle interfaces. The reason: too many independent variables.

If you want to make a real killing in this market, think beyond the
conversion tools for date expansion or windowing or encapsulation. Create a
universal date translator that will accept outside dates (within a
temporary file or third party program with no documentation available), and
converts
the date to a format that the client is using internally. Oh, and make sure
that it allows for multiple date formats within the client site, because
someone talked them into converting a small portion of their programs to
"just get through the end of the year."

Hank
--------------------------------------------------------

Glenn
___________________________________________________
Glenn Ericson,          Phoenix Consulting                      
P O Box 701164   East Elmhurst NY 11370-3164 USA                            
Ph. 718 898 9805         Fx. 718 446 1150
AS/400 & Year 2000- - Solutions     � 1997  all rights reserved
____________________________________________________


 
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