At 03:18 AM 9/9/1999 -0400, you wrote:
>I'm getting a lot of flak from a Y2K consultant (big 8 accounting firm
>representing our client) about not testing.  We have three HP918s at various
>locations, all on  MPE/iX 5.5 PP4 with latest version of NRJE (I have all HP
>Y2K compliance statements).  The application software was developed in house
>(by me) and has been Y2K compliant
>(and recently tested in-house) since it's original design in '85.

Is this a contradiction?   First you indicated that there had not been any Y2K
testing and then you indicate that it the application had been tested.
This is
a bit confusing....  If the consultant is concerned about Y2K testing of the
hardware, this has been done by HP and information/statements concerning
this is
available on their web page.  If the consultant is concerned about the
reliability
of this info from HP, I'm sorry, but HP would have a fairly large liability if
they were wrong.

If the consultant is concerned about the application itself, you may have to
document how/why is already is Y2K compliant. You may also want to include a
back-up/action plan for the Y2K roll-over.  If this isn't sufficient, you
have to put together a testing plan along with estimated costs and potential
impacts to conduct a full-test and present this to mgmt along with the other
report.  It's then becomes mgmt's decision as to whether to accept the
consultant's position and request that the testing be done, knowing the cost
and possible impact on business plans; or accept your report about the
current Y2K readiness.  Be sure to also include an assessment of risk, because
it may be that there is little impact to the business should the application
experience a Y2K problem, and the cost of the impact when weighed against
the estimated cost of conducting a full assessment is indeed an acceptable
risk for mgmt.

Obviously if the application can affect human life, there is a potential for
high-risk such that testing is literially mandatory from a liability
perspective.  But if the application simply keeps track of employee
security cards, then the exposure to the business may be very little and
the business can accept the potential level of risk (unless you're
Los Alamos....;-)

Also, don't forget to include the cost of the consultant in the test plan
estimates, as they will need to be involved in reviewing both the plan,
testing procedures and results in order to give a fully qualified opinion
that the testing is complete....

I've also seen situation (not Y2K-related) where consultants generate these
'concerns' which result in extending their contract, at their $150-$250/hr
rates....

>Also this
>Consultant is  very concerned that we use COBOL as our standard language.

Obviously the consultant needs to qualify their concern.  Just because they
may not be familiar with COBOL doesn't mean they should flag it as an area
of concern.  If this is true, professionally the consultant should contact
someone in their firm who is better qualified to assist.

From my perspective this would raise red-flags as to the qualifications of
the consultant and/or hidden-agenda.  Perhaps they are promoting something
like SAP (which the big-8 has reaped large implementation fees from).
These's simply too many trade groups/etc. that could be used to shoot holes
in this if the consultant is making statements about COBOL languages.  Sure
sounds like some other agenda is below the surface.....or this is a
frustrated VB (or could it be a Mark-IV) consultant that doesn't understand
much about 3GLs... :)  There is simply way too much code written in COBOL
that drives the world's largest corporations to be concerned about a
standard language.....



/jf
                              _\\///_
                             (' o-o ')
___________________________ooOo_( )_OOoo____________________________________

                        Thursday, September 9th

          Today in 1776 - Congress adopted the name "United States"
                   1850 - California became the 31st state.

___________________________________Oooo_____________________________________
                            oooO  (    )
                           (    )  )  /
                            \  (   (_/
                             \_)