Re: Y2K- how much is necessary

Wawrzaszek wrote:

> Y2K food for thought:
>       As all companies are doing, we are evaluating what to do for the year
> Y2K.  We are looking at updating our software to a higher version that
> supports 2000, or buying a tool that will convert our existing software.
> Both are VERY expensive.

This is where an intimate knowledge of your application allows you to choose
where to enhance instead of "shot gunning".

IMHO not all dates need to be expanded, just the ones that are acted upon and
even some of those can be handled with a window technique.  For example, in our
customer master file we have the date of last sale.  One program updates it and 
a
single program uses that information to archive inactive accounts.  A windowing
technique will work fine for a date of this nature.  For the outstanding 
invoices
file, the invoice due date is used in date duration math and for file sequencing
so it will be expanded.  Our rule of thumb came down to any date which is used
for days duration/sequencing is expanded, those dates used for months/years
duration are windowed.  Informational dates are left alone.  (BTW all of our
dates are CYYMMDD formatted already so it's a little easier for us then if we 
had
MMDDYY dates)

For EDI or download to PC databases you may be forced to expand dates for the
needs outside of your 400 applications.  You might be able to write bridge
programs to handle this instead of modifying your data base and all related
programs, but again that is where an intimate knowledge of the application makes
you the best judge of which approach to use and the workload required for Y2K
readiness.

Good luck.

P.S. A while back the Dept. of Licensing changed the life of a drivers license
and I just renewed mine last August and the expiration date is 082801.  The
thought occurred to me: Did they change the duration of a license to avoid 
having
any expiration dates mmdd00 and thereby avoiding modifications to any process
that chokes on it?  Not all solutions require a software change. :)

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