Millenium Bug Essay, Research Paper

Millenium Bug

The twelvemonth 2000 is practically around the corner, assuring a new epoch of illustriousness and admiration. . . every bit long as you don t own a computing machine or work with one. The twelvemonth 2000 is conveying a Pandora s Box of gifts to the computing machine universe, and the latch is easy coming undone.

The twelvemonth 2000 bug is non truly a & # 8220 ; bug & # 8221 ; or & # 8220 ; virus, & # 8221 ; but is more a computing machine industry error. Many of the Personal computer s, mainframes, and package out there are non designed or programmed to calculate a future twelvemonth stoping in dual nothing. This is traveling to be a dearly-won & # 8220 ; fix & # 8221 ; for the industry to absorb. In fact, Mike Elgan who is the editor of Windows Magazine, says & # 8221 ; . . . the job could be concerns a sum of $ 600 billion to remedy. & # 8221 ; ( p. 1 )

The false belief that mainframes were the lone machines to be affected was short lived as industry realized that 60 to 80 million place and little concern users making math or accounting etc. on Windows 3.1 or older package, are merely as susceptible to this & # 8220 ; bug. & # 8221 ; Can this be repaired in clip? For some, it is already excessively late. A system that is devised to cut an one-year federal shortage to 0 by the twelvemonth 2002 is already in & # 8220 ; hot water. & # 8221 ; Data will go erroneous as the Numberss & # 8220 ; merely wear T add up & # 8221 ; any longer. Some Personal computer proprietors can upgrade their computing machine s BIOS ( or finish operating system ) and upgrade the OS ( runing system ) to Windows 95, this will put them up for another 99 old ages. Older package nevertheless, may really good hold to be replaced or at the really least, upgraded.

The twelvemonth 2000 has become a double job. One is the inability of the computing machine to accommodate to the MM/DD/YY issue, while the 2nd job is the reluctance to which we seem to be willing to turn to the impact it will hold. Most IS ( information system ) people are either unconcerned or unprepared.

Let me give you a & # 8220 ; short take & # 8221 ; on the job we all are confronting. To salvage storage infinite and possibly cut down the amo

unt of key strokes necessary in order to come in the twelvemonth to date-most IS groups have allocated two figures to stand for the twelvemonth. For illustration, “1996? is stored as “96? in informations files and “2000? will be stored as “00.” These two-digit day of the months will be on 1000000s of files used as input for 1000000s of applications. This two figure day of the month affects informations use, chiefly minuss and comparings. ( Jager, p. 1 ) For case, I was born in 1957. If I ask the computing machine to cipher how old I am today, it subtracts 57 from 96 and announces that I m 39. So far so good. In the twelvemonth 2000 nevertheless, the computing machine will deduct 57 from 00 and say that I am -57 old ages old. This mistake will impact any computation that produces or uses clip spans, such as an involvement computation. Banker s beware! ! !

Bringing the job closer to the home-front, allow s analyze how the CAPS system is traveling to be affected. As CAPS is a many-sided system, I will concentrate on one country in peculiar, ISIS. ISIS ( Integrated Student Information System ) has the ability to acknowledge pupils, register them, measure them, and maintain an academic history of each pupil ( classs, transcripts, transportation information, etc. ) inside of one system. This pupil information system has 100s and 100s of mentions to day of the months within it s OS. This is a COBOL system accessing a ADABAS database. ADABAS is the file and file entree method used by ISIS to hive away pupil records on and recover them from. ( Shufelt, p.1 ) ADABAS has a set of regulations for puting up keys to stipulate which record to entree and what type of action ( read, compose, delete ) is to be performed. The day of the months will hold to hold centuries appended to them in order to stay right. Their ( CAPS ) & # 8220 ; fix & # 8221 ; is to alter the codification in the Procedure Division ( utilizing 30 as the cutoff & gt ; 30 century = & # 8220 ; 19 & # 8243 ; 30 ) so it can be assumed that you are mentioning to a twelvemonth in the twentieth century and a & # 8220 ; 19 & # 8243 ; will be moved to the century field. If the twelvemonth is less than 30 (