Year 2000 Problem 3509

Argument for the statement "The Year 2000 bug will have such extensiverepercussions that families and individuals should begin planning now for theimminent chaos." The Ticking Bomb Introduction A serious problem called the"Millennium Bug", and also known as the "Year 2000 Problem"and "Y2K", is bringing a new century celebration into a dauntingnightmare.

In the 1860s and 1970s, when computer systems were first built, thecomputer hardware, especially information storage space, was at a premium. Withan effort to minimise storage costs, numeric storage spaces were drained to thesmallest possible data type. Ignoring the fact that a software may be run inmultiple centuries, programmers started conserving storage spaces by using twodigits to specify a year, rather than four. Consequently, on January 1, 2000,unless the software is corrected, most software programs with date or time maymalfunction to recognise the entries in the year fields "00" as theyear as "1900" instead of "2000" .

Year 2000 problem is notrestricted only to the above exigency. 20 years ago, everybody understood that aleap year came every 4th year except for every 100th year. However, a piece ofalgorithm has been forgotten by most people – a leap year does exist every 400years. So, under the first two rules, year 2000 is not a leap year, but with thethird rule, it actually is.

Computing errors will also occur before Year 2000.Values such as 99 are sometimes used for special purposes not related to thedate. The number 99 is used in some systems as an expiration date for data to bearchived permanently – so some computers may lose the data a year before 2000.Programmers and software developers were surprised to see some of their programssurvive for only a few years but failed to anticipate the problems coming by theyear 2000.

It is sorrowful to find most programs are still in use or have beenincorporated into successor systems. Because of the need for new applications toshare data in a common format with existing systems, inheriting the six-digitdate field that has become a standard over time. The disaster scenario envisagedis that a great number of computer systems around the world will make processingerrors and will either crash or produce incorrect outputs . As a resultfinancial institutions, businesses organisations, informational technology andeven aeroplane radar communications will all then be in a welter of confusion.In military services, the system meltdown may also worsen the appropriatecontrol of nuclear missiles in silos. It is a ticking time bomb destined towreak havoc on millions of computer systems in every economy, both commercialand residential, and thus need everyone's serious attention.

However, the bug islikely to affect more staggeringly the business computers which imply analarming economic problem. Many organisations have not yet started projects toexamine the impact of the millennium bug on their systems. By applying TheStandish Group’s CHAOS research to Year 2000 projects, 73% of Y2K projectswill fail according to the pace now taking. The biggest challenge for thesecompanies is convincing top level management of the severity of the year 2000problem and the amount of time, money and resources needed to fix it. On thataccount, to ensure this disaster is minimised, none of us should worm out ofdevoting resources in preventing the potential anarchy. It is a costly Task Assimple as the problem sounds, the fix for the Millennium Bug will cost up toUS$600 billion world-wide, according to estimates by the Gartner Group, aleading information technology consultancy.

The software fixes are verytime-consuming, requiring considerable effort to examine millions of lines ofsource code in order to locate problem date fields and correct them. The coststo apply the fixes will vary from company to company, but research has given thefigure of approximately between US$0.50 to $2 per line of source code formodification, with these costs expected to escalate as much as 50 per cent forevery year that projects are delayed. Unfortunately, this average excludes dateconversions on military weapons systems software, which is expected to besignificantly more expensive to convert, and the real figure should even be muchlarger. One of the first steps an organisation needs to take on the way toensuring Year 2000 compliance is to determine what they have to be changed.

Thebusiness will need to prepare an inventory of hardware and software utilised toallow assessment of problem areas. It is hard to address the potential forproblems when no clear picture of the problem space is available. Documentationshowing the processing steps being performed by the company's computer system inorder to accomplish business functions needs to be available to ensure that allprocedures are present and accounted for. There is no "Silver Bullet"The problem looks straightforward, all we need is just to check each line ofcode, locate the two-digit date fields, expand them to four digit and test thecorrection. Unfortunately, these modifications are mostly manual labour – notan automatic process.

Software Dilemma Six-digit date fields are generallyscattered throughout practically every level of computing, from operatingsystems to software applications and databases. Some dates have numericrepresentation, while other have alphanumeric representations. This adds to thecomplexity of the problem from a management and technical point of view. The bugcontaminates a large area that nearly all of the program codes must be examinedto ensure that correction is free from side-effects.

A case in point, a typicalmedium size organisation, a state comptroller's office in United States, ispredicted to spend US$5.6 million to $6.2 million to make the softwareconversion, that is, nearly a billion lines of code must be repaired.Furthermore, there are computing languages still in use today that only ahandful of people are even aware of, let alone proficient enough to be calledexperts.

Skills for some older, more obscure languages and systems will, morethan likely, make the Y2K a more serious problem. Some uses of two digit datesmay not be obvious. For example, the UK Driving Licence number encodes theholder's date of birth – using a two digit year code. Dates used in thisnature will create Year 2000 problems without the obvious use of dates in theprogram.

Some systems use dates fields for non-standard uses, such as specialindicators and how your systems have abused the date field is something you canonly find out by looking at every line of code, which is a huge costs in timeand resources. With the variety of programming languages and platforms in usethroughout that past three decades, and the multitude of uses for date fields,and the extensiveness of infected programming area, no single "silverbullet" could exist to correct the problem. Moreover, the problem cannot besolved individually. Y2K is a universal problem which will bring a chain effectamong industries and firms. No business is immune, every firm is affected –either directly in its own operation, or indirectly, by the action or inactionof others.

A Year 2000 compliant computer system may fail to process, produceerror messages or generate incorrect data even if it receives contaminatedprograms or data from a third party that is not Year 2000 compliant. With allthese issues involved, and with remaining time ever decreasing, managementawareness must focus on these problems. The Hardware Dilemma If the computerhardware cannot handle dates past 31/12/99 then no software solution can fix it.Some applications request the system date directly from the hardware and cannotbe trapped by the operating system, which obviates a software resolution. Forinstance, the PC hardware problem can be explained as follows. The standard PCcomputer system maintains two system dates: one is in the CMOS Real Time Clockchip, a hardware component normally located on the machine’s motherboard thatstores time, date and system information such as drive types; and the other oneis in the operating system software, these two dates are representeddifferently, influencing one another.

When the computer boots, it normallyinitialises its current date by reading the date in the CMOS Real Time Clock andconverting it to days since January 1, 1980. The PC maintains its date as longas the system is running; the CMOS Real Time Clock hardware maintains its datewhether the system is running or not, but it does not maintain the century. So,the standard flaw lurks in the CMOS Real Time Clock date when Year 2000 isreached as it reads an out-of-range date. Moreover, a few specific BasicInput/Output Systems cause behaviour other than the standard flaw.

Importantly,the Award v4.50 series BIOS will not allow any date after 1999 and can not becorrected by any software. Dates are integrated in computer hardware, frommainframe, mid-range machines, all the way down to network infrastructure. Datefields are used in some of the most basic computer functions such as calculatingand sorting and will affect a large majority of systems.

If year fields areexpanded to 4 digits, this will automatically give rise to the need foradditional storage space. In due course, the original reasons for theintroduction of 6 digit dates will resurface. Any computer application thataccepts or displays dates on the screen or produces a report with date fieldswill need to be redesigned. On-line transaction databases will need to beconverted and the new expanded database will need to be kept in sync with theold active database during the conversion process. In some cases there will beinsufficient space available to accept or display additional data, forcing amajor revision. If paper forms are used for input, these will also need to beredesigned.

Screen, report and form redesign appear to be a minor issue in thecontext of the Millennium Bug, but the design of screen and reports areimportant from a usability perspective, and the redesign process cannot beautomated. Any changes to the way dates are handled in an organisation will needto be coupled with staff training to ensure that all staff are aware of any newstandards. Other Dilemma Implied However, to ensure that the corrected work runsfree of errors after January 1, 2000 midnight, testing of the changed code mustbe performed. There is no way around this.

As testing is around 50% of allprogramming tasks, the actual programming tasks are just one small cog in thewheel used to resolve the Millennium Bug. With the rigidly fixed deadline, andthe ever decreasing amount of time, this will require a large investment inresources, to ensure a smooth run from the development to production phases.Less seriously discussed in the Year 2000 issue by the public, as the Year 2000deadline approaches and the time remaining for corrective work shrinks,companies may choose, or be forced into, outsourcing the resolution of theirMillennium Bug to a Year 2000 service provider. The 'service provider' wouldhave to load a copy of the software onto its computer system to perform the bugfixes, and this raises the issue of software licensing. Many licences containrestrictions barring licensees from providing a copy of the software to anythird party without the consent of the licenser, and this could present problemsin the event of a dispute between vendor and client.

Conclusion The year 2000challenge is inescapable and omnipresent, affecting every businesses andindividuals, regardless of age or platform. As discussed, there are many aspectsof the Millennium Bug problem that are not immediately obvious, ranging fromlegal issues such as copyright and licensing, to issues of available resourcesand existing bugs. Carrying out a solution in any business involves carefulplanning in order to be successful. The four steps – awareness, planning,implementation, and testing – are crucial for a company to run successfullybeyond the year 2000. Unlike most other IT projects there is a definite, fixedand immovable deadline for implementation.

If there is not enough time tocomplete the programming and testing, or if unexpected delays occur, thedeadline remains fixed and cannot be moved. Only if companies start correctiveaction soon enough and devote sufficient resources to the effort can minimisethe effect of this universal nightmare. Table A – Example of the Year 2000Problem With Current Date Format (mm/dd/yy) Current Date Birth Date CalculatedAge 06/19/99 06/19/59 40 06/19/00 06/19/59 - 59, 59, or Error Corrected to8-Digit Date Format (mm/dd/yy) Current Date Birth Date Calculated Age 06/19/200016/19/1959 41 N.B. this requires that two dates be changed (both current dateand birth date) Figure B – Some Sources of Year 2000 Problem Computer CentralProcessing Unit8 Hardware Clock8 BIOS (Basic Input/ Output System)8 Networkserver Other Hardware8 Modem8 Added Printed Circuit Card8 Telephone AnsweringMachine8 Video Equipment Software8 Operating System8 Packaged Software8 In-houseCode, Databases, Spreadsheets, etc. Embedded Chips8 Process Control Systems8 FaxMachines8 Video Cassette Recorder8 Heating, Ventilation and Air conditioningControl8 Internal Combustion Engine8 Automatic Camera8 Security System8 FireDetection System8 Medical Equipment8 Time-keeping and Attendance Systems8Bar-code Reader System Bibliography Jerome T.

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