A scaleable, automated process for year 2000 system correction

As the 21st century approaches, many computer programs will begin to fail. Applications that rely on dates of any kind may simply stop working or produce incorrect results. The year 2000 problem is a matter of business importance, not just software maintenance. Program failures arise from representing calendar dates (year, month, and day) in just 6 digits, a format that allows only 2 digits for the year. The Year 2000 problem is pervasive. It occurs in calculations, comparisons and other logic involving date-related processing including date-oriented sorting and date-indexed tables. The problem occurs in databases and files as well as in code. The paper discusses the design of an automated software tool for code and data Y2000 correction and shows how to use the tool in a large scale system correction process. The solution is discussed in the context of large, COBOL-based commercial systems. Nonetheless, our approach is fully generalizable to other languages and classes of applications.