IBM Y2K Readiness

["Leland, David" <dleland@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Just received an interesting response from IBM regarding their Year 2000
readiness.  We are using their Fax/400 product and they claim it to be
Y2K ready.  I questioned this in an e-mail to them since I had noticed a
log file (QAFFTLOG, which is an important file to us) had a 6 digit date
in it (in the format YYMMDD) and did not have a century code to go along
with it.  Following is the response I received from IBM:

> Answer 2) The OS/400 and IBM Licensed Programs will, in most cases
> continue to
> use a 6 digit date field for "release to release" compatibility. The
> system has
> delivered additional function for those cases where customers need to
> see dates
> in a different format. Some of those functions are *DATE for RPG
> returns 8
> digit dates, CVTDAT supports 8 digit dates, ILE COBOL can extract 8
> digit dates
> along with a variety of other "tools". You can find out about these
> functions
> in a document titled "AS/400 Roadmap to the Year 2000" we have on our
> web page
> at:
> 
>      http://www.softmall.ibm.com/as400/year2000/rldss/
> 
> The system previously had used a 6 digit date field with a 2 digit
> year. In
> that case, the year field represented 00 to 99. With the Year 2000
> ready
> versions of AS/400 products, the year field has been shifted through
> the use of
> a "window" so that the years 40 to 99 are associated with a "19" and
> 00 to 39
> are associated with a "20". In this manner, the system continues to
> use a 2
> digit year but can determine through the use of that window, the
> non-ambiguous
> year... You can find out more about the "window" in the AS/400 Roadmap
> document.
> 
It sounds like they're telling me that they don't intend to change the
date from a 6 digit date and it's up to me to use the date "window"
technique to determine the correct year.  Does anyone else besides me
feel that that's not right?  They could essentially tell me that any IBM
system database file is Y2K ready as long as it has a 2 digit year.

What do you think?
Dave
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