Year 2000 Compliance

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• The problem
  The Millennium problem with old software (i.e. more than a few days old) is one of the heaviest discussed subjects on the Internet. Last time I scanned for "Y2K" Alta Vista gave me 2,777,410 hits. It's only 10% of the hits on "sex", but still not insignificant.
  
  
  You should also check IBM's Year 2000 site. Looking for link-pages, the one just called Year 2000 is one of the biggest independent Y2K-sites and there is also the similar www.y2k.com. Two significant Danish Y2K-pages are the ones of År2000 Sekretariatet and IT Brancheforeningen.
  If you are just starting your Y2K-project there is however one article I suggest that you read: Roberto Di Matino's ten rules to interpret it.
  The definition of Y2K compliance that now is more or less standard is the one from BSI.
• Solutions - and how I could help you
  • In iSeries News I have found a very concrete Year 2000 Survival Guide. One thing should however - to my opinion - be more stressed out in the article: Although the solution does not require special skills other than the normal requirements to programmers, the work has a special 'flavour' not very attractive to many: More demands on error free coding and less creativity.
    
  • Tools. This is one of the reasons why one should seriously consider using a conversion tool. A list of these is found here. I have found the Bypass2000 conversion utility from IBM very useful. You can download the user guide to look in, ore read the case story about how it was used by Toyota. Ideally it should be possibly just to identify all two digit years in the database and then 'press the button' to create a converted version. No such thing as a free meal: Even for BYPASS2000 there is a many details that must be cleared out manually, e.g. 'Can I expand the 2.0 work field that sometimes contains a year and sometimes a transaction code?'.
    Given the fact, that the critical date is here very soon - in some cases already tomorrow I have written a draft on how I could participate in conversion of your application. Let me hear from you about this, but rather today than tomorrow. I'm busy too.
  • You might want to read the comprehensive book about "How to Move Your iSeries 400 (AS/400) Beyond Y2K: The Complete Story".
    Steven Goetjen has published The Only "FREE" Year 2000 Solution, which is actually much the same method that I use, except that I replace most of the repeating monotonous tasks with Bypass2000 for accuracy and cost effectiveness.
• Have fun
  You have probably heard this before, but if you haven't you should read the standard Y2K joke.
  More? See those cartoons, this or the huge humor links here or here.

Last modified: 20.2.2003.
File name: http://hkrebs.dk/y2k.html