Frequently asked questions about the Year 2000 Challenge
Q. What is the Year 2000 Challenge and how did it happen?
A. The year 2000 challenge spans the entire information technology (I/T) industry. It arises from the nearly universal practice over the years of using two digits rather than four to designate the calendar
year (e.g., DD/MM/YY). Computer programs used a two-digit notation to save valuable storage space and data entry time (just as people commonly refer to “the class of ’96’). Although this practice was common, it can lead to incorrect results whenever computer software performs arithmetic operations, comparisons or data field sorting involving years later than 1999.
Q. Who does the Year 2000 affect?
A. It is a significant challenge across the I/T industry and for any business, agency, institution or person using computers. Any system or program, including desktop software, could be affected if two digits are
used to represent the year. In addition, data sharing across networks or between users creates the possibility of “contamination” by two-digit data.
Q. Can’t a user just switch from using two digits to four?
A. The process for making the change is fairly straightforward. Users must first determine whether the data that represent “year” is stored as two digits and then find all the applications that use those data. If
only two digits are used, the file format must be changed to four digits. Every application program that stores or references these data must also be changed. Finding all the programs that reference these data
and then coordinating the change are time consuming, depending on the number of date representations in the application program.
Q. What actually happens if the Year 2000 issue is not corrected?
A. Any computer calculation that involves a date — such as a consumer credit card transaction, a five-year auto loan beginning in 1996 or mortgage calculation — could yield incorrect answers.
Q. Why didn’t the I/T industry foresee from the beginning that two-digit year fields would be a problem and use four digits to represent the year?
A. Until recently, computer memory and storage were costly and in short supply, and performance could be adversely affected by the manipulation of “unnecessary” data. It made sense to save several characters in every date entry in a database, especially those containing millions of records. And even programmers who considered the issue may reasonably have assumed that the applications they were writing would be replaced long before this calendar change could cause problems. Remarkably, many of those old programs are still in use.
Q. Is the Y2K problem a hardware or system software problem or both?
A. It is primarily a software application problem but both hardware and software are involved.
Q. What should computer users do to fix the problem?
A. Computer users need to update applications and data fields that do not handle century markers or dates beyond 1999. Specifically, they should:
-Determine the magnitude of the problem facing them by assessing their entire system, including the full portfolio of system and application software source code (including any shrink-wrapped, off-the-shelf
applications) to determine what needs to be updated and made Year 2000-ready;
-Decide the best way to make the updates; most likely on an individual, program by program basis;
-Implement the updates to the source code; test to make sure it handles both 199X and 2XXX data
correctly; and establish a procedure to ensure that the source code can’t be inadvertently changed back to a two-digit format.
Q. What’s the rush? Why can’t users fix their problems and be Year 2000-ready in 1998 or 1999?
A. Many customers may run out of time and be unable to alter their application portfolio if they wait. Also, the Year 2000 challenge is beginning to surface for some users and will occur more frequently as we
approach 2000.
Q. What about IBM hardware? Is it Year-2000 ready?
A. The hardware timers on IBM System/390*, AS/400* and RS/6000* servers and Personal Systems* computers using PowerPC* technology (specifically listed in IBM’s Year 2000 and 2 Digit Dates: A Guide for Planning and Implementation) are not affected by the Year 2000 date change.
